Cardinal Health CFO confident of 2009 spinoff

NEWTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) - U.S. drug wholesaler Cardinal Health Inc (CAH.N) remains confident it will be able to spin off its medical-device business next year despite the bleak credit environment, a top executive said on Thursday.

"We're still confident," said Chief Financial Officer Jeff Henderson. "There is a certain amount of credit that will be required to accomplish the spin and we'd have to be appropriately prudent about the timing, but in my mind it's not a question of if, it's a question of when."

The biggest challenge facing that unit right now is that hospitals are delaying purchases of respirators, drug-dispensing devices and other capital equipment, he said.

"The CEOs and CFOs of those institutions are sitting on orders now as they try to make sense of the environment and try to make sense of where the next few months are going from a capital standpoint," Henderson said in an interview on the sidelines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's CFO summit. "The question for us is how long will this last, whether this deferral by a hospital is a two-week deferral or two months or two quarters?"

The company would consider acquisitions, though completing the spin-off to shareholders of the medical device unit is a higher priority at the moment, he said. Cardinal is interested in businesses that would boost its presence outside the United States, where it now makes more than 95 percent of its sales.

"We have an opportunity to grow more globally," he said. "While we do have a good presence outside of the U.S., it's probably not as robust as it should be."

Cardinal competes with AmerisourceBergen Corp (ABC.N) and McKesson Corp (MCK.N).

(Reporting by Scott Malone, editing by Matthew Lewis)