Vascular Solutions CEO Howard Root Blames Reps for Sleepless Nights: Sells Company to Teleflex Inc. For $ 1 Billion
December 9, 2016
According to his PR team Star Tribune Vascular Solution‘s arrested, indicted & acquitted CEO Howard Root has decided* to leave the company he co-founded and ran for 20 years. Frequent readers will recall that Root, unethically & abusively threatened me unsuccessfully with legal action.
*Has decided in the industry is often, but not always, code for the decision is made for them. For example when Johnson & Johnson’s Acclarent stated they decided to remove the Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer from the market in 2013, what they really meant to say is that they were in a sealed DOJ investigation where FDA required the removal of the product from the market. No company just decides to walk away from a $40 million product.
Before Vascular Solutions, whose company under the direction of CEO Root paid a DOJ civil fine of $520,00, sells to Teleflex Inc. for $1 billion, he couldn’t help to take one last page from The Sociopathic Business Model™, manipulating facts, and placing blame without taking accountability.
“I love the company today; I love working with medical devices,” Root told the Star Tribune Friday after the deal was announced. “But after going through [a] five-year criminal prosecution by the government over nothing [$520,000 DOJ fine is nothing?], over what words my sales reps said, I just realized that I don’t want to be in a situation where every night when I go to bed I worry about whether a sales rep said the wrong words.”
Sure, just like all the employees at Wells Fargo decided to commit fraud by creating false accounts and all the employees at Johnson & Johnson’s Acclarent decided to commit fraud never selling the device on label but only off-label, which I’m sure had nothing to do with every rep using the exact same talk-track created at the executive level. Employees certainly weren’t threatened or intimidated into breaking the law, fearful of job loss…because we know that retaliation never happens.
Except in the Wells Fargo case the CEO stepped down and the CEO of Johnson & Johnon’s Acclarent & VP of Sales were arrested, indicted, convicted and awaiting sentencing. Root, like OJ Simpson and Casey Anthony, was acquitted; and, I think every night before we go to bed we’ll all be happier to know that Howard Root decided to leave the company he co-founded in the healthcare industry. At the very least I sense employees knowing this is the last time they’ll get blamed by Root, will have their first good night’s sleep in years.
On a personal note congratulations to Vascular Solutions whistleblower, DeSalle Bui, who I’m sure caused Root some well-earned sleepless nights.