MEDRAD's president will retire
WARRENDALE — Bayer Medical Care announced Tuesday that John Friel, president and CEO of MEDRAD, will retire later this year.
MEDRAD, which makes and services medical devices for diagnoses and disease treatment, has facilities in Victory Road Business Park, Clinton Township, as well as its international headquarters in Warrendale.
Friel, who has been with MEDRAD for 30 years, will retire July 1 and be replaced by Samuel Liang, CEO of Vascular Therapies in Totowa, N.J.
Luanne Radermacher, MEDRAD spokeswoman, said Friel's retirement would not cause any major company changes in personnel or facilities. MEDRAD has 2,100 employees, 1,200 of whom are in the Pittsburgh region.
"Knowing the schedule (Friel) keeps, once he has a chance to relax, I think he will begin to think about what he plans to do next," she said.
As for his successor, Liang has been president and CEO of Vascular Therapies, a startup company developing a combination drug-device product for surgery, since July 2008.Before that, he spent 24 years at Cordis, a Johnson & Johnson company, in engineering, international, strategic and commercial leadership roles, including: vice president of marketing for Cordis Cardiology, worldwide vice president of Commercial Operations forCordis Endovascular and Disease State Leader/GM of Cordis Neurovascular.Liang also was the vice president of the Cordis Global Stent franchise and worldwide vice president for Cypher programs, where he led all aspects of the company's stent franchise and its initiatives in drug-eluting stents. This included commercializing and launching Cypher, the world's first drug-eluting stent.Liang has a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and Material Sciences from Duke University and a master's degree in management from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University.Bayer Medical Care is a division of Bayer HealthCare and is made up of the businesses of Bayer Diabetes Care and MEDRAD.
