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MicroPort’s Wright Bid Creates New Ortho Player

Wright Medical’s decision to sell its hip and knee business wasn’t entirely unexpected. The buyer, the Chinese company MicroPort, may have surprised some, but changes in orthopedics and the device industry as a whole could make such deals more common.

Wright Medical Group NV’s decision to sell its hip and knee joint business shouldn’t really have surprised anyone. [See Deal] CEO Robert Palmisano – in the eyes of one Wall Street analyst – is a “money maker” who has generated significant returns for investors by guiding businesses like eye company IntraLase Corp. and peripheral vascular player ev3 Inc. into the arms of larger strategic acquirers, Abbott Laboratories Inc.’s Abbott Medical Optics Inc. (then called Advanced Medical Optics) and Covidien Ltd., respectively. [See Deal][See Deal] Wright watchers say Palmisano had set a similar course for Wright when he joined as CEO in 2011. Early on, he divided the company into two distinct businesses, one focusing on the high-growth extremities sector and the other centered on the low-growth large joint sector. Given the divergent fates of the two sectors, it wasn’t difficult to guess which business was on the way out.

The time was right for Wright. Palmisano, in a conference call, told analysts the company has made "significant progress" in building out its extremities business. The company late last year acquired BioMimetic Therapeutics Inc. for $183 million (with earn-outs that could double that), giving Wright a recombinant human platelet-derived growth factor that could reinforce surgical bone repair in foot and ankle fusion procedures

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