Namal Nawana has been diagnosing the problems at Smith & Nephew since he became chief executive of the medical equipment maker last May.
The company has been limping along for some years, delivering underwhelming financial results and making it vulnerable to a break-up or takeover that threatened to bring to an end its 163 years of independence.
The company dates back to a pharmacy founded by Thomas James Smith in Hull in 1856 and expanded during the First World War when, under Horatio Nelson Smith, the founder’s nephew, it sold surgical and wound dressings. It has been a constituent of the FTSE 100 for almost two decades.
The business, which retains a research and development site in Hull, operates three franchises: sports medicine and trauma,