Geoff Martha today officially assumed the CEO spot at Medtronic (NYSE:MDT), taking the helm of the world’s largest medical device company amid the COVID-19 pandemic and what could be the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The leadership transition — announced yesterday in an SEC filing — has been public knowledge since August 2019. Martha’s predecessor Omar Ishrak retired from the CEO spot ahead of the company’s mandatory retirement age but is staying on in the newly created role of executive chairman at the company. Early this year, Ishrak also became board chair at tech giant Intel.
Martha has held senior- and executive-level roles at Medtronic since 2011. Before that, he had a 19-year career at GE Healthcare, where Ishrak also rose up as an executive.
Martha played a leading role in the most important strategic move that Medtronic made during Ishrak’s CEO tenure: the $50 billion buyout of Covidien in early 2015 and the major integration project that followed. Medtronic now turns to Martha to lead it through the COVID-19 pandemic, which is causing the company to take a 60% hit on weekly revenue.
