When

Wednesday, May 9, 2018 from 4:30 PM to 8:00 PM CDT
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Where

Golden Valley Country Club
7001 Golden Valley Rd
Golden Valley, MN 55427

Driving Directions

Contact

Hannah Hegman
Financial Executives International, Twin Cities Chapter
612-293-9420 ext 3
hannah@dogoodevents.com

FEI Twin Cities Event

Monthly Meeting

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Golden Valley Country Club

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Event Schedule:

4:30-5:30 Registration & Networking

5:30 Dinner

6:00-7:30 Presentation from Howard Root - CARDIAC ARREST: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds' Hit-List

7:30-8:00 Coffee & Dessert

Program Overview:

Howard Root is the recently-retired CEO of Vascular Solutions, Inc.,a Minnesota medical device company he founded in 1997 and led in creating over 100 new medical devices and 650 American jobs.

In 2011, the federal government threatened to destroy his company and send Howard to prison. All over one device. A device that never harmed a single patient and made up less than 1% ofthe company’s sales.

Even after the charges were proved baseless, the Department of Justice refused to back off. In 2016, after hiring 121 lawyers at a cost of $25 million, and without calling a single witness to testify at trial, Howard and Vascular Solutions received a complete acquittal. One juror emailed afterward: “What the federal government did to you, your company and your employees is nothing short of criminal.”

Howard Root’s story illuminates unchecked Department of Justice greed and misconduct. In this dinner forum, Howard will share how he stood up against the federal government and what can be done to check the virtually unlimited power of prosecutors in America.

Presenter: Howard Root

Howard Root is native Minnesotan who started his career as a corporate lawyer but quickly turned into an entrepreneur and never looked back. He founded the Minnesota medical device company Vascular Solutions in 1997 and continued to run it for 20 years, inventing and launching over 100 new cardiovascular devices and creating over 650 U.S. jobs along the way. In February 2017, Howard sold Vascular Solutions to Teleflex for $1 billion.

The motivation behind the sale of Vascular Solutions and Howard’s voluntary early retirement is a true-life legal nightmare. It started out as a false accusation by a disgruntled former employee, and culminated five years later in a San Antonio court room with unanimous “not guilty” verdicts after a five-week criminal trial. Even a single guilty verdict would have destroyed Vascular Solutions and sent Howard to prison for years over the words spoken by a few of the company’s salespeople about just one of the company’s medical devices, a device that constituted only 0.1% of the company’s sales and never harmed a single patient yet required a legal team of 121 lawyers at a cost of $25 million to defend.

Even though he was exonerated, after the trial Howard made the decision to sell Vascular Solutions and retire rather than continue to assume the risks of a medical device public company CEO in this environment. Howard then wrote the book Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on theFeds’ Hit-List which documents his five-year legal battle and provides insights to anyone engaged in business in America on how a malicious criminal prosecution can happen to them and what can be done to be prepared if it does.

Register Now! Financial Executives International – Twin Cities Chapter (FEI) may photograph, film and/or otherwise record this event, which may result in your image or voice being captured incidentally. Your presence at the event will constitute your consent to be recorded, and for FEI to edit, use, and publicly display any recordings for FEI’s purposes

FEI Twin Cities will contact you in the event that you are ineligible to attend this event. Eligible attendees include members in good standing of FEI, qualified guests or chapter strategic partners. Qualified guests are generally those individuals who qualify for membership in FEI, and who have not attended a regular monthly meeting within the last twelve months.

For more information about FEI membership qualifications, please click here (http://www.feitwincities.com/join-fei) or contact our Vice President of Membership, George Boyadjis, at gboyadjis@cresa.com or 612-373-0298.

This program will offer (1) CPE Credit in the field of Behavioral Ethics. Financial Executives International is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors through its website: www.learningmarket.org.