Frank Baylis and Kris Shah announce huge deal for the cardiology devices business they built
A company that is co-owned by former classmates at Waterloo Engineering has hit pay dirt with the sale of its cardiology business for US $1.75 billion.
Baylis Medical Company Inc., which is co-owned by Frank Baylis (BASc ’86, electrical engineering) and Kris Shah (BASc ’86, electrical engineering), announced this week that it has reached a deal with Boston Scientific Corp. that is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022.
Baylis, executive chairman of the Montreal-based business, and Shah, the president, met during a co-op placement during their first year as engineering students at Waterloo.
In 1989, they both joined Baylis Medical – which had been started by Baylis’s mother, Gloria, three years earlier – and built it into a leading medical devices company with offices worldwide. They previously sold two other divisions to major US companies.
“Baylis Medical Company is proud of its Canadian roots and commitment to investing in the Canadian biomedical sector,” Shah said in a media release.
Frank Baylis, also a former Liberal MP, and Shah were honoured by Waterloo Engineering in 2014 with the Faculty’s Team Alumni Achievement Medal, and have both been staunch financial supporters of their alma mater.
In addition to backing an entrance scholarship in honour of Gloria Baylis and an annual award for a Capstone Design project with a biomedical focus, the company donated $300,000 in 2016 for a student garage in Engineering 7 to provide biomedical engineering students with dedicated space to work on their senior-year projects.
The sale to Boston Scientific is expected to drive global growth and adoption of the Baylis cardiology devices, for which sales are now concentrated in the U.S. and Japan.
Baylis and Shah announced they will use proceeds from the sale to build another medical devices business, Baylis Medical Technologies, that is focused on radiology and neurosurgery.
Photo: Business partners Frank Baylis, left, and Kris Shah met during their first year of undergraduate studies at Waterloo Engineering in the early 1980s.
