The succession wave that began at Agilent in 2024 has carried into 2025 and 2026 across most of the listed analytical-instrument names. Sartorius changed chief executives in mid-2025. Thermo Fisher and Danaher both have finance leadership turning over in the first quarter of 2026. Endress+Hauser is mid-way through a deliberate rotation of three executive-board seats and a supervisory-board chair. HORIBA’s chairman was reappointed in March 2026 but with materially reduced shareholder support after an activist intervention.

For buyers of process analyzers and lab instruments, the relevant question is not who holds which title but whether the relationships, roadmaps, and supply commitments that have been negotiated under prior leadership remain intact. The pattern across the group is overwhelmingly one of pre-announced, internal succession - which lowers the risk of strategy resets, but does not eliminate it.

Where the seat changed in 2025-2026

Sartorius AG. Dr Michael Grosse succeeded Dr Joachim Kreuzburg as Group CEO on 1 July 2025. Kreuzburg had led the company for more than 20 years. Grosse arrived from Syntegon Technology, where he was chairman and CEO from 2020 to 2023, with prior executive roles at Tetra Pak; his doctorate is in mechanical engineering. The succession was announced in December 2024 with a six-month overlap, and is the most consequential CEO change in the cohort this cycle.

Thermo Fisher Scientific. Two transitions land within thirty days of each other in spring 2026. On 1 March 2026, Stephen Williamson hands the CFO seat to Jim Meyer, currently vice president of financial operations, after eleven years as CFO. The retirement was disclosed on 23 July 2025. On 12 January 2026, the company filed an 8-K announcing the simultaneous departures of EVP and COO Michel Lagarde (effective 31 March 2026) and EVP Frederick M. Lowery (effective 28 February 2026), the promotion of Gianluca Pettiti to President and COO, and an expanded role for Michael Shafer. Marc N. Casper remains chairman and CEO. The structural read is that Thermo Fisher is consolidating segment leadership into a tighter circle around the CEO without altering the top of the chart - a continuity move, not a strategic pivot. Operators monitoring Thermo Fisher’s analytical-instruments segment trajectory should expect commercial contacts and roadmaps to remain stable through the handover.

Danaher. Matt Gugino, currently group CFO of the Life Sciences Innovations Group, succeeds Matt McGrew as group CFO on 28 February 2026. McGrew, CFO since January 2019, moves to executive vice president on the path to retirement. The announcement was made on 22 July 2025. CEO Rainer Blair is unchanged.

Endress+Hauser. The Reinach-based private group is rotating three executive-board seats and a supervisory-board chair on a planned schedule. Dr Mirko Lehmann became the group’s first chief technology officer on 1 July 2025. Prof. Katja Windt joins as COO on 1 February 2026, succeeding Dr Andreas Mayr, who moves to the supervisory board on 1 May 2026. Helena Svensson takes the CHRO role on 1 May 2026. CIO Pieter de Koning also retires in 2026. Separately, Matthias Altendorf will not stand for re-election as president of the supervisory board at the 13 April 2026 AGM, with Steven Endress nominated to succeed him. CEO Dr Peter Selders is unchanged. For operators tracking the company’s Raman Rxn probe refresh, the technology agenda now sits with Lehmann.

Where the seat held - but not without noise

HORIBA Ltd. At the 21 March 2026 annual general meeting, Chairman and Group CEO Atsushi Horiba was reappointed with 74.4% of votes cast in favour, down sharply from approximately 91.0% the prior year. The decline followed a public campaign by Hong-Kong-based Oasis Management urging shareholders to vote against the reappointment. Horiba retains the seat. Whether the reduced mandate translates into structural changes at the group is the open question for 2026.

Bruker, Waters, Mettler-Toledo, Revvity, Bio-Rad, Agilent. No CEO changes in 2025-2026. Frank H. Laukien remains chairman, president and CEO of Bruker (a role he has held since 1991). Udit Batra continues at Waters and is steering the announced merger with BD’s Life Sciences and Diagnostic Solutions business through close. Patrick Kaltenbach at Mettler-Toledo, Prahlad Singh at Revvity, and Norman Schwartz at Bio-Rad continue unchanged. At Agilent, Padraig McDonnell - who took the seat on 1 May 2024 from Mike McMullen - is now in his second full fiscal year and his commercial reorganisation is the live story rather than a succession one.

What it means for instrument buyers

Three reads are worth carrying into procurement conversations this year. First, the cohort’s bias toward internal succession - Pettiti, Meyer, Gugino, Lehmann, Windt - reduces the probability of late-stage product-line cuts and platform consolidations driven by a fresh-eyes review; new outside CEOs typically run such reviews in their first 12-18 months, and the cohort does not have one. Second, the visible turnover concentrates in finance and operations seats, not in technology or commercial leadership; ongoing platform commitments, including process Raman, NIR, and inline FTIR roadmaps, sit with people who are mostly staying in place. Third, HORIBA is the one name where a routine 2026 vote produced an unroutine result; buyers with multi-year analyser commitments to that group should at minimum ask their account teams how the activist conversation is shaping capital allocation for the analytical-process-systems segment.

For broader vendor context, our Q1 FY2026 read on Agilent and our Bruker Q1 2026 update sit alongside this scorecard.