Terrible Leadership

Unfortunately there is no innovation. No new products in the pipeline, even though that some old ideias are being discussed. The competition isn't sleeping. Let's hope for the best. Good people are still around.

 

Too late, Mentor is being shopped around by J&J. Today Codman was dumped, tomorrow it may be Mentor as J&J continues paring back it's medical device business. Mentor has been slimmed down as much as possible to make it sexy to a private equity firm or to another company looking to get into aesthetics, like Hologic.

 

Mentor isn't "aesthetics" anymore. It is a logistics company trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B without crashing. It has a leadership team that can't navigate to point B and some great reps that know how to get to point B but aren't being asked how...

 

Watch out for Allergan in 2017. They are very smart and have the resources to execute.

 

Mentor is dead.

 

Because of the pension, I stayed at Cordis until the very end. Now I still work for Cordis, but my business card says Cardinal.

They constantly talked about "iterations", a new handle on an old stent. A new length on an old guide catheter. A new deployment button on an old crossing device.

It was all bullshit. They sold us for what they bought us for. In the meantime we made 100's of millions of profit they pumped into Ethicon and Shlomi's baby Biosense Webster.

 

I'll add, the move to Cardinal was the best thing that has happened to us, so I wouldn't fear being divested from JnJ. The downside was losing the pension and more than that, losing access to lifetime healthcare coverage as I was 3 years shy of 55. Had a buddy 3 months shy of 55- he got nothing.