Word: breen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Taking over a conglomerate mired in controversy poses unusual challenges. "I wasn't naive about what I was entering," Breen says. "My first day, almost 20% of our investor base showed up--in the third hour--in my office." They wanted to know how Breen was going to restore credibility to a health-care, electronics and security-alarm company that once aspired to be the next GE before Kozlowski's fall brought it to disrepute. The new CEO moved quickly. In his first six months he replaced Tyco's board of directors wholesale, fired the entire top corporate team...
From the beginning, Breen took the long view of what would be required to resuscitate Tyco. "There were very strong operating businesses in Tyco that got lost in the spotlight," he says. Breen inherited more than 2,000 individual businesses--and some 267,000 employees--that are involved in everything from health care to plastics to fire alarms. He tried to determine which units needed rebuilding and which just required a little push. He introduced a new system of financial checks and balances and drew up long-term plans for each division, something completely new to some Tyco units. "During...
Rich Meelia, president of Tyco Healthcare, a unit that makes syringes, gauze and other medical products, remembers one of his first meetings with Breen. It took place about six weeks after Breen arrived at Tyco and, Meelia says, signified an end to the old regime. He explains, "We go to him and we say, 'We got to take $50 million and not report it as earnings. We got to plow it back into the business.'" Meelia, who has led the health-care group since 1995, expected resistance, because he knew the company was strapped for cash. "He said, 'Go ahead...
That $50 million now seems well spent; Breen calls the decision a "no-brainer." Tyco Healthcare's management was already strong, Breen says, and its products (more than 40 are in the pipeline for release in the next two years) are well positioned for an aging U.S. population. All the unit needed was some basic management. It's a far cry from how Kozlowski ran things. Meelia says that before Breen's arrival he had little contact with Tyco's corporate management, which didn't review the strategic plans Meelia submitted and for some reason lumped health care with plastics...
Every new detail that emerges in the trial about Kozlowski's alleged excesses only reinforces Breen's reforming mission. Last month a former Tyco spokesman testified that Kozlowski used company funds to pay for a $20,000 background check on the fiance of a Merrill Lynch analyst who followed the company. And, of course, there was the birthday party in Sardinia for Kozlowski's wife, which prosecutors claim was partly paid for with Tyco funds and featured a cake in the shape of a woman with exploding breasts...