Laurence Fairey Gets Back in the Game.
BY ROBIN R. YOUNG CFA, JUNE 21, 2004
Jumping back into the fray after 4 years of semi-retirement, former Sofamor Danek and Richards senior executive, Laurence Fairey has agreed to become President and Chief Operating Officer of Wright Medical today.
Laurence Fairey is one of the best regarded executives in this industry. While making his mark at companies such as Richards and Sofamor Danek, he is widely credited with being among the small handful of executives on Ron Pickard's team that made Sofamor Danek the dominating player it is today in the spine industry.
Joining two other orthopedic heavyweights, Barry Bays and Jim Treace, at Memphis based Wright Medical, Fairey gives this firm, we believe, one of top management teams in orthopedics. To put it more succinctly, this is a team built to manage a billion dollar orthopedic company.
Fairey will be running Wright Medical's operations. Culturally, we don't expect to see any change from the Bays and Treace approach. But, with a background in accounting, sales and marketing, Fairey will likely be a little less of a gear-head than Barry, whose background is engineering.
Barry Bay's role changes with Fairey coming on board and will be more 'strategic.' Observers should expect Wright Medical to push the company's existing strategic initiatives in biologics, extremities and all the other areas that brought Wright, to quote Barry, 'to the party' faster.
With $70 million in cash and stock worth $1.2 billion - Wright certainly has the financial wherewithal to throw the long ball. The question is, does this team have the will and opportunity. We suspect that Barry would call augmenting his current businesses, particularly biologics, as being strategic. We note that Fairey's prior employer put $50 million down on an unproven new biologics technology over a decade ago called BMP. Today, we estimate that business is worth well in excess of $1 billion. It can be done.
Bottom line: Wright Medical keeps getting more and more interesting.
