Abstract
At the end of April 2011, the financial markets were surprised by the news that the largest US health care company, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), acquired the entire Synthes firm for a total amount of USD 21.6 billion (CHF 19 billion). In one single deal, the previously independent firms Mathys, Stratec Medical, and Synthes USA—all involved with the beginning of the commercialization of the AO-designed implants combined under Synthes—had become a subsidiary of a large US healthcare company. What began in a small workshop run by Robert Mathys, Sr. in the small town of Bettlach in Switzerland and bootstrapped on little capital, had just been valued at USD 21.6 billion. The date of the announcement came 53 years after the first prototypes of the AO Instrumentarium had been fabricated by the initial design duo of Robert Mathys, Sr. and Maurice Müller.
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Notes
- 1.
IPO stands for Initial Public Offering, describing the first entry of a privately held company into the stock market.
- 2.
Collaboration and Support Agreement between AO Technology AG and Synthes, Inc., dated 13 December, 2008.
- 3.
Source: AO Foundation Annual Reports from 2005 to 2015.
- 4.
Telephone interview with James Kellam, Past AO President 2004–2006, conducted on 4 January, 2018.
- 5.
Interview with Sven Zybell, Head of Manufacturing, DPS, Bellach and Grenchen plants, conducted on 28 February, 2018, in Bellach, Solothurn, Switzerland.
- 6.
“Schweizer J&J Mitarbeiter wechseln den Arbeitgeber”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, July 20, 2018.
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Jeannet, JP. (2019). One Final Merger?. In: Leading a Surgical Revolution. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01980-8_40
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