The board of Smith & Nephew is doing all the right things. This has always been a stodgy business whose hip and knee replacements, still a third of the group, have grown according to macroeconomic trends and increasing wealth in emerging markets. This has meant, in times of economic stringency, that growth has gone into reverse as patients opt to delay non-essential procedures.
So the company has spent $2.8 billion since 2011 on 15 acquisitions, including its biggest, ArthroCare, which it paid $1.7 billion for a year ago.
This took it further into the higher margin area of sports medicine, and it reckons that this and other high-growth areas, such as emerging markets and the bio-active treatment of wounds, now account for 35 per cent