Orange County’s medical device companies saw employment rise 3% during the past year, according to this week’s Business Journal list.
The 26 largest medical device makers operating here added nearly 350 workers in the past 12 months, thanks mostly to No. 8 Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics Inc.’s buy of IntraLase Corp. of Irvine.
Without the shuffling of jobs to Advanced Medical from IntraLase, which ranked No. 17 on last year’s list, the other 25 device makers posted a 1% job gain.
In all, the companies, which make heart valves, catheters, testing instruments, eye devices and other products, employ 12,643 people locally.
A year ago, the largest medical device companies in OC boosted their workforce by 5%.
This year’s list includes three newcomers. Eight figures were estimates.
Like last year, this year’s job gain came as the perennial No. 1 Beckman Coulter Inc., a Fullerton-based maker of medical testing equipment and gear, saw a decline in its workforce. Beckman, which also has operations in neighboring Brea, posted a 12% decline to 2,077 workers.
The company’s seen a slew of restructuring job cuts lately and has shifted local workers to a Chino facility.
Beckman made headlines earlier this year, when it was in a two-month chase for Biosite Inc., a San Diego-based diagnostic test maker. Beckman and Inverness Medical Innovations Inc. of Waltham, Mass., battled it out for Biosite before Beckman decided it wasn’t going to match a $1.7 billion offer from Inverness.
No. 2 Edwards Lifesciences Corp., an Irvine maker of heart valves and other devices, added 71 jobs locally, a 4% gain from a year earlier. Edwards counted 1,833 workers in the county.
The device maker is in its seventh year as an independent company after spinning off from Deerfield, Ill.-based Baxter International Inc., whose OC operations ranked No. 13 on the list.
Applied Medical Resources Corp., a Rancho Santa Margarita maker of devices for heart, vascular and less-invasive surgeries, ranked No. 4 on the list with an estimated 775 workers. A year earlier, Applied Medical added 167 people, a 29% gain, because of general business growth.
Two of this year’s biggest gainers grew by acquisition: Advanced Medical, the Santa Ana eye products company, and No. 10 Plymouth, Minn.-based ev3 Inc., which has operations in the Irvine Spectrum.
Advanced Medical completed its $808 million buy of IntraLase, which makes lasers used in vision correction surgery. That gave it 237 more jobs, pushing its local workforce up 50% to 708.
Advanced Medical has grown on its own and through large deals. Before the IntraLase deal, it bought Pfizer Inc.’s cataract surgery business in 2004 and Visx Inc., a maker of eye surgical lasers, in 2005.
Like Beckman, Advanced Medical also was involved in potential takeover drama this year. In the wake of a voluntary recall of its Complete MoisturePlus contact lens solution after it was linked to a rare eye infection, Advanced Medical announced a bid for rival Bausch & Lomb Inc.
Advanced Medical offered more than $4 billion in cash and stock for Bausch, which had already accepted a smaller go-private bid from Warburg Pincus LLC, a private equity firm.
Advanced Medical’s plans, however, hit a snag when ValueAct Capital, an activist hedge fund and its third-largest shareholder, objected to the deal. The company eventually dropped its bid for Bausch after determining it wouldn’t get enough time to convince skeptical shareholders of it.
Ev3, a maker of devices for treating brain and blood vessel diseases, saw its OC employment grow by 160 jobs, or 67%.
The company recently wrapped up its $115 million buy of Irvine device maker Micro Therapeutics Inc. Ev3 now counts nearly 400 workers at its offices off Toledo Way and Bake Parkway in the Irvine Spectrum. Last year, it had about 240 employees.
“We anticipate growing more. The county’s workforce is an attraction,” said James Corbett, ev3’s chief executive who lives in OC, during an earlier interview.
“Technical expertise means more to us than the cost of labor, and a higher-quality workforce, which we get here,” Corbett said.
Another notable gainer: No. 12 Masimo Corp., which posted a 36% increase in workers to 370 people. Masimo went public in August in a $202 million initial public offering.
Rounding out the top five was No. 3 B. Braun Medical Inc. in Irvine, a unit of Germany’s B. Braun Melsungen AG. It posted a 1% decline to 1,311 workers.
B. Braun, which recently signed a lease for 258,506 square feet of warehouse space in Westminster, makes things such as needle-free intravenous connectors and drug delivery systems locally.
The unit plans to use the building at 7300 Hazard Ave. to store finished products, according to spokesman Jonathan Braido.
Distribution work is set to move from B. Braun’s Irvine campus to Westminster. How many workers are making the move isn’t clear.
B. Braun also has a change in its top local official. Pete Klaes now is its general manager, replacing longtime OC general manager Michael Wallace.
Alcon Laboratories Inc., a Nestl & #233; SA unit, came in at No. 6 with 630 workers in Irvine, down 6% from a year ago.
Alcon, which makes eye drugs and surgical instruments, competes with Advanced Medical.
Tustin-based Toshiba America Medical Systems Inc. followed at No. 7. The device maker posted a 12% gain to 588 local jobs. Toshiba America, a maker of medical testing equipment, is part of Japan’s Toshiba Corp.
No. 8 Medtronic Heart Valves in Santa Ana posted the biggest loss in jobs. Its workforce dropped 8% to 550 workers. A spokeswoman in Medtronic Inc.’s Minneapolis-based corporate office didn’t return a call for comment.
The top 10 was rounded out by No. 9 Sybron Dental Specialties Inc., a unit of Washington, D.C.-based Danaher Corp., with an estimated 425 local workers. Sybron is slated to consolidate its OC operations later this year into an Anaheim building that faces the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway.
Newcomers included No. 22 SenoRx Inc. of Aliso Viejo, which makes breast biopsy devices, at 122 workers. SenoRx went public in March in a $45 million offering.
Endologix Inc. of Irvine and Eyeonics Inc. were the other newcomers.
No. 24 Endologix counted 116 local workers. The company makes Powerlink, a device that treats abdominal aortic aneurysms, which occurs when the body’s largest blood vessel that runs from the heart balloons out and threatens to rupture. Powerlink is a tube-like device placed in the aorta to keep it from rupturing.
And Eyeonics, an Aliso Viejo eye device maker, tied at No. 25 with an estimated 105 local employees. Eyeonics, which makes the Crystalens, a replacement lens that gives people “natural vision” after cataract surgery, filed to raise up to $86.3 million in an initial public offering in late July.
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Advanced Medical Giving $2.5M to UC
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Beckman Coulter in Fullerton: cut nearly 300 jobs |
Advanced Medical Optics Inc., a Santa Ana contact lens care and eye surgery company, has given $2.5 million to the University of California, Irvine’s ophthalmology department and its proposed eye institute.
The money is earmarked for programs, technologies and clinical efforts to enhance visual health.
Advanced Medical Chief Executive James Mazzo is a longtime booster of the proposed institute, which is awaiting approval from the UC Board of Regents.
In an earlier Business Journal interview, Mazzo said he envisioned the eye institute as being similar to the University of California, Los Angeles’ Jules Stein Eye Institute and the University of Southern California’s Doheny Eye Institute, a pair of top-ranking research and treatment facilities that could be potential models for UCI’s project.
“Through progressive university and industry collaboration, (the) institute will translate innovative ideas into vision-saving therapies,” Mazzo said.
UC Irvine’s proposed eye institute is scheduled to provide surgical and medical eye care for conditions such as diabetic retinopathy and age-related eye diseases like glaucoma and cataracts.
,Vita Reed
