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Righting Wright Medical

In the early 90's, already strong in total knee replacements, Wright Medical ambitiously staked out markets in hips, trauma, spine and arthroscopy. Much of the expansion was accomplished through a series of acquisitions, perhaps the most important of which was the 1994 acquisition of Orthomet Inc. But those ambitions were never realized, and Wright spent from 1996 to 1998 changing management several times, laying off large numbers of employees and exiting nearly all of the businesses it tried to get into in 1993-'94, all while sales were flat or in decline. Nevertheless, Warburg Pincus, which bought Wright this month, clearly sees opportunity where others don't.

In the early 1990s, Wright Medical seemed poised to make a serious run at creating the next major US orthopedics company. Fresh from the debacle of the breast implant litigation, the company, then known as Dow Corning Wright, refashioned itself as Wright Medical Technology Inc. , and under new CEO Herb Korthoff, formerly of United States Surgical Corp.(now a unit of Tyco International Ltd. ), began an aggressive move into a wide variety of orthopedic segments [See Deal].

Always strong in total knee replacements, Wright Medical ambitiously staked out markets in hips, trauma, spine, and arthroscopy, and even...

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