Bayer agreed to buy Conceptus for about $1.1 billion in cash to add a permanent contraception device to complement the German company's offerings in women's health.

Conceptus shareholders will receive $31 a share in cash, the companies said in a statement yesterday.

The price is 20 per cent above last week’s close for Conceptus.

Revenue for Conceptus’s Essure contraceptive, a pair of flexible metal and fiber coils inserted in the fallopian tubes, jumped 22 per cent in the first quarter.

The planned acquisition comes at a time when sales of Bayer’s Yaz and Yasmin oral birth-control pills are falling because of competition from low-priced copies.

Bayer also sells the Natazia pill and intrauterine devices such as Mirena. – (Bloomberg)