Applied solutions company !%Idex Corp.%! of Lake Forest, Ill., announced on May 11 that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire !%3301%%CVI Melles Griot%! from Norwest Equity Partners. Based in Albuquerque, N.M., CVI Melles Griot, with annual revenue of $185 million, designs and manufactures lasers and optical equipment used in the life sciences, research, semiconductor, and security and defense markets for applications such as spectroscopy, cytometry, remote sensing, target designation and interferometry. CVI will operate within Idex’s Health and Science Technologies segment as an addition to the optics and photonics platform. At a price of approximately $400 million in cash, CVI is expected to be accretive to Idex’s earnings within the first full year after acquisition, according to a press release from Idex. CVI will now join ATFilms, bought earlier this year, and Semrock, acquired in 2008, said Idex chairman and CEO Larry Kingsley.