This is all speculation on my part. I have no inside info; I’m a lowly individual contributor. But this is my guess:
- Geoff is DONE. There is no coming back from this. Performance in his tenure has been poor to put it kindly; morale was already at an all-time low. Now it’s cratered. The sheer size of this RIF, how poorly it’s been executed, the utter lack of transparency, the refusal to quantify it in size or duration - there’s no recovery from that. His credibility was on life support to begin with. I realize that employee sentiment here and at cafepharma might not be fully indicative of the overall employee base, but he’s not far from having a full blown mutiny on his hands.
- . Which makes me think, as others have implied, that the Board already made up their mind (it’s close to dereliction of duty if they haven’t). He’s a deadman walking and they’ve chosen to make him a useful id--t on his way out the door. Better for him to be the bad guy and the face of one of the lowest moments in company history, so that the new CEO comes in with a clean slate. Gotta earn that golden parachute.
- . So who’s next? Staying in house didn’t work too well last time, and virtually all of the other candidates from when Geoff was tapped have moved on to greener pastures. I say Omar comes back on an interim basis while a search is conducted. He’s left Intel; his SPAC has fallen flat. There was a rumor the Board already reached out.
- . Who after Omar? Who knows. Mike Coyle is out there. Chris Barry will be if the NuVasive/Globus deal goes through (though they’ll never let an ex-Covidien person in the big chair). Maybe they go way outside like they did with Omar.
- . I think there’s something to the GIH being for sale rumor posted here. MedSurg has been stripped down to GIH and Surgical. Off-loading GIH leaves Surgical as a stand-alone portfolio/OU, like Diabetes, which would make more sense as to why Marinaro got appointed to Ex-Com. Que is the only other OU Pres who’s on it. Then they’re positioned to spin-off Diabetes and/or Surgical next time they need a cash infusion. Then the company is largely broken-up, fulfilling the GE parallels, and legacy Medtronic is largely back in tact since so many feel M&A has been the root cause of all the problems