Medical device maker Medtronic’s hiring of a new chief executive will have ripple effects in Orange County.
Brett Wall, who heads Medtronic’s brain therapies group (comprised of multiple divisions) in Irvine, on Nov. 1 will take over as the boss of the company’s restorative therapies group, one of four Medtronic business groups.
That group—with some $8 billion in annual revenue—was headed by Geoff Martha, who is slated to become the next Medtronic CEO.
“It is truly an honor to be selected by the board to lead the restorative therapies group, a group that Geoff has so successfully led over the past four years,” Wall said in a statement. “It’s my absolute privilege to lead this group, which has an incredibly strong leadership team and more than 14,000 dedicated and passionate team members around the world.”
Wall intends to stay in Orange County, where Medtronic employs 2,200 people in total, for now.
The RTG group includes work related to brain therapies, pain therapies, specialty therapies, and the spine.
Omar Ishrak, who has been chief executive since 2011, is stepping down as CEO of Medtronic (NYSE: MDT), effective next April 27, because of a mandatory 65-year-old retirement age set forth by the company. He will be given a newly formed executive chairman position on the board.
Along with the brain therapies division, local Medtronic units include Santa Ana’s heart value unit, which is led by Emmanuel Dujaric. The heart valve unit’s employee count runs about 700 people, according to the Business Journal’s annual list of device makers published last year. The Business Journal will publish an updated list of medical device makers in the Sept. 23 issue.
Edwards Lifesciences Corp. (NYSE: EW), the most valuable OC-based company that is publicly traded, is Medtronic’s closest rival in the heart valve industry.
Covidien Ties
Ishrak was responsible of the $50 billion buyout of Covidien in 2015. Covidien had grown in Orange County in 2010 when it purchased for $2.5 billion Ev3 Inc., which had 400 Irvine employees at that time. Wall was a senior vice president, international, at Ev3 at the time of the purchase.
Wall, a 1987 graduate in business administration from the University of Nebraska at Kearney, has worked almost 25 years in the industry, including five as director of marketing, Asia Pacific, for Boston Scientific.
Martha, 49, led the integration of Covidien into Medtronic when he was named chief integration officer in 2014 ahead of the buyout. Prior to that, he served as the managing director of business development for GE Health.
Medtronic, which has a $144 billion market cap, reported $30.6 billion in revenue in fiscal 2019.
