A little over two years after taking on the top job at Smith & Nephew, CEO Roland Diggelmann is stepping down.
His last day with the medical devicemaker will be March 31, and Deepak Nath, Ph.D., will assume the chief executive mantle the following day, April 1.
Diggelmann is stepping down “by mutual agreement,” according to the company. His appointment became effective in November 2019, giving him only a few months to find his bearings before guiding the company through the coronavirus pandemic, which his employer said he’s done with aplomb.
“I would like to thank Roland for his commitment and leadership during challenging times, and the important work he has done to ready Smith & Nephew for our next stage of development,” Roberto Quarta, the company’s chairman, said in a statement.
Diggelmann joined Smith & Nephew a year after stepping down as the head of Roche’s diagnostics division. He replaced Namal Nawana, whose own tenure at the helm of the U.K. devicemaker lasted about a year and a half and came to an end over salary demands.
“It has been a privilege to lead Smith & Nephew. I would like to thank my colleagues across the business for their tireless efforts to support our customers and communities, and continue to deliver against the backdrop of COVID,” said Diggelmann. “I look forward to seeing the business go from strength to strength under Deepak’s leadership.”
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Like his predecessor, Nath arrives at Smith & Nephew fresh off a stint leading a major medtech’s diagnostic business. He hails from Siemens Healthineers, where he served as president of laboratory diagnostics from 2018 to 2021, at which point he was named president of the entire diagnostics segment.
Before that, he spent a decade at Abbott. His final years there were spent first as president of the Abbott Molecular diagnostics division, then in the joint role of president of Abbott Vascular and a senior vice president of the entire company.
In a LinkedIn post he shared Feb. 22, Nath described his career move as the realization of “my ambition to lead a large publicly listed company.”
He also reflected on the “multi-year transformation” that he oversaw within Siemens’ diagnostics department, writing, “I am particularly proud of the innovation engine that we have put in place and in the investments that we have made to strengthen how we bring clinical and workflow excellence to the laboratory and at the point of care.”
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In accordance with policies approved by Smith & Nephew’s shareholders in 2020, Nath will receive a base annual salary of $1.475 million. He’ll also be given up to $800,000 in November to account for the 2022 cash bonus he forfeited by leaving Siemens, plus more than $8.5 million in Smith & Nephew share awards to replace those allotted to him by Siemens.
He joins Smith & Nephew amid a period of modest growth, as the company continues its recovery from the impact of COVID-19 on medical device sales. In year-end financials published alongside the news of Nath’s appointment, the company reported $5.2 million in revenue for 2021, marking a year-over-year increase of more than 14%.
That growth was led by its sports medicine and ENT, and advanced wound management segments, which returned to pre-COVID levels of growth, even as the company’s orthopedics segment continued to face pandemic-related setbacks.