NEW YORK (AP) -- Medical device maker Stryker Corp. said chairman, president and CEO Stephen MacMillan has resigned.
The Kalamazoo, Mich., company said Wednesday that MacMillan stepped down for "family reasons." Chief Financial Officer Curt Hartman will be interim CEO, and Lead Director William Parfet will become non-executive chairman of the board. The company is looking for a permanent replacement for MacMillan and will consider candidates from inside and outside of Stryker.
MacMillan became Stryker's president and chief operating officer in June 2003. He has been president and CEO since 2005. MacMillan was named chairman in 2010.
Hartman has been with the company since 1990 and has been its CFO since April 2009. Parfet has been on the board for almost 20 years.
In a note to clients, Citi Investment Research analyst Matthew Dodds said the timing of the announcement is unfortunate. The annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons began Tuesday, and Dodds said Stryker was making a "solid showing" of products at the conference.
Dodds said Stryker's next CEO will probably come from outside the company, and he suggested two possible replacements for MacMillan. One is Mike Mogul, who worked at Stryker for more than 20 years. Mogul spent about six years as the head of Stryker's orthopedics business before he left the company in May to become CEO of DJO Global. Dodds said another possibility is Gary Fischetti, the chairman of Johnson & Johnson's DePuy orthopedics, spinal and neuroscience business.
Jefferies & Co. analyst Raj Denhoy said Stryker will have to deal with some uncertainty. He said MacMillan has done a good job with weak spending from some markets, but he doesn't expect big changes when the company picks a new CEO.
"We expect little change in terms of strategy and financial targets over the near term," he wrote in a note to clients.
Shares of Stryker fell 72 cents to $54.03 in afternoon trading.
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