Harvard Bioscience CEO Retires

Chane Graziano

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By Rick Saia

Chane Graziano, the CEO of Holliston-based Harvard Bioscience Inc., has resigned for personal reasons after 17 years in that role and will retire, the company's directors announced today.

Graziano, 74, is giving way to David Green, the company's president, who will serve as interim CEO. The board of directors said it will begin a search for a new leader immediately.

Harvard Bioscience (HBIO) is a maker of tools used in life science research. In its most recent financial statement, it said it took in $111 million in revenue in 2012, slightly up from $108 million in 2011. But its net income dropped to $2.4 million from $3.8 million over the same span.

"We have accomplished a great deal together," Graziano said in a statement distributed by the company. "At 74 years of age, 17 years as CEO and 49 years in the industry, it is the right time for me to retire."
Graziano is also stepping down from his seat on the board of directors.

Green has also sat on the board since 1996.

In the financial filing, Graziano said the company made progress despite going up against a "difficult economic environment and political uncertainty." He noted several milestones were achieved regarding the firm's Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology (HART) business, which included the start of a clinical trial in Russia with two trachea transplant patients who were treated using HBIO's bioreactors, establishing its own trachea scaffold production facility in Holliston and filing registration statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission in December to begin an initial public offering and separate HART from HBIO.

Earlier this month, the company announced that a tracheal scaffold and bioreactor system it had manufactured were used in the first successful transplant of a regenerated trachea in the United States.

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