Robert Grant, chief executive of the Aliso Viejo-based global surgical business of Bausch & Lomb Inc., is the new chairman of Octane, a booster group that supports Orange County medical and technology startups.
Grant succeeds Dwight Decker, the former chief executive of Newport Beach-based chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc., whose term as Aliso Viejo-based Octane’s chair recently ended.
Grant took the job at Bausch & Lomb’s surgical unit in August after being approached by people he knew at Warburg Pincus LLC, a New York private equity firm that bought Rochester, N.Y.-based Bausch in 2007.
Previously, Grant was as corporate vice president of Irvine-based Allergan Inc. and president of the Allergan Medical business unit.
Allergan Medical came about after Allergan spent more than $3 billion in 2006 to buy Inamed Corp. of Santa Barbara, a deal which brought the Lap-Band weight loss device and breast implants.
Octane also elected Andrew Policano, dean of the University of California, Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business, and Bob Romney, vice chair of UCI’s chief executive roundtable, to its board.
