Guidant Bid

Boston Scientific's stock is down about 3.5% following the $25 billion bid by the Natick-based medical devices company to purchase Indiana-based Guidant Corporation, one of the nation's leading makers of pacemakers.

The bid trumps an offer by rival Johnson and Johnson to buy Guidant for close to $22 billion earlier this year.

No word yet on whether Johnson and Johnson will now increase its offer.

Boston Scientific has grown into Massachusetts' largest life-sciences company, due mostly to sales of its line of stents; a device commonly implanted to prop open collapsed arteries.

Click the listen link to hear Howard Anderson's view of Boston Scientific's future. Anderson is a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management.