Article preview reprinted from IN VIVO - August/September, 2009
Since becoming CEO of orthopedics giant Zimmer two years ago, David Dvorak has faced a host of challenges unprecedented in this booming market, including a federal investigation into and settlement of questionable relationships with customers and the most severe economic crisis in 30 years. But Dvorak seems calm and confident as he looks ahead. Read more...Navigating Ortho's Choppy Seas: An Interview with Zimmer's David Dvorak
Article preview reprinted from IN VIVO - August/September, 2009
It's good to be king, right? "Not always," says David Dvorak the (relatively) new CEO of Zimmer Holdings Inc., a global leader in orthopedics. A lawyer by training, Dvorak served the orthopedics giant in a number of different posts, including General Counsel and SVP of Corporate Affairs, for which he headed business development, before being named CEO following the retirement of Ray Elliott in 2007. (Elliott's retirement proved short-lived; earlier this year he was named CEO of Boston Scientific Corp.)
A CEO post is a natural goal of any senior executive, and it must have been doubly attractive to Dvorak as he rose through the ranks at Zimmer, given the strong performance of both the orthopedics industry, generally speaking, and Zimmer, in particular for much of this decade. But soon after taking office, Dvorak was hit by two industry-shaking events—events that didn't single out Zimmer but hit hard nonetheless. First came the settlement by the US Attorney's Office in New Jersey of the Department of Justice investigation into questionable relationships between orthopedics companies and the surgeons who work with them to design products and conduct educational and training sessions—investigations in which Zimmer featured prominently—and the new rules that the settlement mandated for orthopedics companies. Second, the global economic meltdown that began last year saw the stock prices of virtually all public device companies drop 50% or more. (The DOJ investigations that led to the settlement actually started before Dvorak became CEO.)
But if David Dvorak has been rattled by the calamitous events he's faced, he doesn't show it. A native of Cleveland and an athlete by training—he was a competitive runner in high school and college—he majored in finance as an undergraduate. Seeking to escape the Midwest winters, Dvorak headed south after college and entered a banking training program in Florida, where he worked initially as a financial analyst and eventually progressed to a corporate lending officer. It was while serving as a lending officer that Dvorak got his first taste of business, and he liked it. "As a lending officer, I had a broad portfolio of companies that I worked with," he recalls. "These were all middle market companies in different businesses, everything from industrial manufacturers to retail stores to software developers. And through that experience, I had an opportunity to go behind the numbers to understand what was driving the business in an effort to do whatever we could from the banking institution's perspective to help our customers achieve their goals and objectives. That really was my initial chance to take my finance background and parlay it into an opportunity to delve into and understand businesses in a variety of different markets."
- David Cassak
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Companies mentioned in this article:
Zimmer Holdings Inc.
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