August 17, 2026
Early Exit Ends Felder’s Zumtobel CEO Tenure
Heiner Lang inherits shrinking profits and pressure in the components business
Dr. Alfred Felder's CEO contract was extended in October 2024, with the Zumtobel Group's Supervisory Board specifically crediting him for navigating the company through difficult times. Less than two years later, it appears more difficult times are why he's leaving early.
Today, the board named Dr. Heiner Lang as Zumtobel's next chief executive, ending Felder's tenure roughly a year before his contract was due to run out in September 2027. But the mechanics here look nothing like an ambush. Lang joins the Management Board September 1 and takes the chairman's role October 1. Chairwoman Karin Zumtobel-Chammah expressed gratitude for Felder's contributions.
Felder has spent a decade on the Management Board, the last eight years as its chairman, a tenure that began in February 2018 when he stepped in as acting president before being formally named CEO that June.
The Numbers Behind the Timing
The timing of Felder’s early contract termination tracks with a company that has spent four straight years watching profits and dividends shrink. Net income fell from €60.0 million in fiscal 2022/23 to roughly €1.0 million ($1.2 million) in the year that closed April 30, and the dividend went with it. Revenue slipped 5.2% to €1.04 billion ($1.2 billion), and a large U.S., UK and Austrian tax writedown did much of the damage to an otherwise operating profitable year.
We've reported closely on one piece of that American picture: numerous investor filings describing the closure of Zumtobel's Highland, New York production, even as the company's U.S. leadership insists manufacturing there continues. Even though the New York layoff notice was real, the contradiction of American & HQ messaging remains unresolved, and it's the kind of thing a new chief executive inherits whether he asked for it or not.
Who Is Heiner Lang?
Lang arrives from WAGO, where he has run day to day operations as managing director and CEO since January 2021, following a stint on Bosch Rexroth's management board. In lighting circles, WAGO's name is mostly attached to its splicing and terminal connectors, the kind of hardware nobody notices until it fails. That reputation undersells the company. WAGO also builds automation controllers, interface electronics, fieldbus couplers and industrial software, a broader footprint than the connector business suggests, and one that lines up more closely with Zumtobel's Components segment than with the branded luminaires most people associate with the Zumtobel name.
That's worth sitting with. Components, built around Tridonic, makes the drivers and controls that end up inside fixtures from Zumtobel's own competitors, and it's the part of the business that just got written down and lost two thirds of its profit in a single year.
For lighting people, the honest read is that four years of cost cutting bought Zumtobel time, not a fix. The board's answer wasn't to promote from inside the fixture business. It was to bring in someone whose most recent roles have been in electronics and controls, the exact corner of the company that just took the hit. Whether that's a coincidence or a plan, it says something about where Zumtobel thinks its next problem actually lives.
