Welcome to the Board

Dr. Roch Doliveux is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Executive Committee of UCB S.A., a global biopharmaceutical company.

Allan Golston has served since 2006 as President, United States Program, for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is a director for Malt-O-Meal, a privately held breakfast cereal corporation.

The global healthcare market continues to evolve—transforming under the forces of regulation, cost pressures and patient demand. At Stryker, we intend to lead that evolution. To do that, we need to compete and perform at the next level—for our colleagues, for our investors and, most importantly, for our healthcare providers and their patients.

Increasingly, we see a shift in purchasing decisions from individual physicians and physician groups to larger provider networks, administrators and executives, all of whom prioritize cost improvement alongside effective patient outcomes. With the advances in efficiency we have made, coupled with our innovation and longstanding role in caregivers’ lives, we believe that we’re in an ideal position to become the provider of choice and a source of broad healthcare solutions.

Bringing solutions like lean technology, systems thinking and consulting to hospitals and physicians requires our businesses to think more broadly across our product lines and function more collaboratively across our separate sales organizations. So over the coming years, we will be coordinating our offerings company-wide to provide customers a more streamlined experience.

The acceptance of change and the opportunity to reinvent ourselves is both a great challenge and a great growth experience for Stryker. To give us the broad perspective and insights we desire to achieve the next level of performance, we expanded the size of our Board of Directors and elected two new directors in 2010: Dr. Roch Doliveux and Allan Golston. Roch is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Executive Committee of UCB S.A., a global biopharmaceutical company based in Belgium. As a globally minded healthcare executive with a strong focus on patients and innovation, his experiences across the global healthcare landscape will be invaluable.

Allan has served since 2006 as President, United States Program, for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is a director for Malt-O-Meal, a privately held breakfast cereal corporation. He previously served as the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer for the Gates Foundation and Director, Finance for Swedish Health Services in Seattle, Washington. We expect to benefit from Allan’s experience as a hospital finance executive, as well as his role at the Gates Foundation. I’m thankful to the Board and to our employees for their contributions in 2010 and toward our future.

It’s an understatement to say that 2010 was an eventful year for Stryker. It was a transforming year. A year ago at this time, we wrote that we were ready to play offense again. Today, we’re proud to be putting some points on the board. The Stryker spirit is alive and well, and we’re growing, investing wisely in our future and delivering results. And we believe we’re ready for the next level.

Sincerely, Signature of Stephen P. MacMillian Stephen P. MacMillan
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer