4.2. PATIENT SCREENING AND RANDOMISATION Patients will be recruited based on the existing medical information from the pool of AMI patients at the clinical centres. Patients who had the primary PCI performed at clinical centres that are different from the recruiting centre can also be included: interested patients may be referred for screening to any of the participating study sites within 3 to 4 days. Informed consent and assessment of eligibility of patients with respect to inclusion and exclusion criteria will be done at the recruiting centre. Written informed consent must be obtained from patients prior to any study specific procedures. After consenting, patients undergo the procedures listed for the screening visit. After ensuring that a patient meets all other eligibility criteria, the investigator will perform the echocardiography and an electronic record of the echocardiography will be kept and transferred to the central Echocardiography Core Laboratory for following analyses. After local quantification of left ventricular ejection fraction, randomisation will be allowed for all patients with LVEF ≤ 45%. At randomization a patient number that will be used as the key identifier for the entire study period, will be supplied. Patients will be randomised to investigational therapy or placebo in a 1:1 ratio. Patients with a LVEF > 45% will not be randomised, but will be classified as screening failures. Patients randomised but not treated will be replaced. Patients who discontinue the study after treatment, will not be replaced.