...does Abbot buying St.Jude give you thoughts and hopes of DHR being bought?
DHR isn't going to be bought by anybody, IMO, but it will do some buying itself. Here's a timeline of DHR's acquisitions since 1999:
The company-altering deal was the acquisition of Pall, which precipitated the spinoff of FTV (DHR's industrial business) and turned DHR into a healthcare 'TGDT' company (#msg-132443173).
p.s. DHR and ABT overlap only in diagnostics, which comprises about 25% of both companies' sales.