KKR hires ex-Danaher executive for industrial deals

By Chibuike Oguh

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Private equity firm KKR & Co Inc said on Monday it had hired former Danaher Corp executive Dan Daniel to bolster its team that focuses on acquiring and operating industrial businesses in the United States.

Daniel, who served as executive vice president at Danaher from 2008 till March this year, is expected to become chief executive of an industrial company that KKR will acquire, and help improve its performance, KKR’s co-head of Americas private equity Pete Stavros said in an interview.

He added that the coronavirus-induced economic slowdown presents opportunities for KKR to acquire companies.

“With demand being down in the industrial sector, it makes for an attractive buying environment,” Stavros said.

Daniel managed Danaher’s industrial technologies and life sciences portfolios until 2017, and subsequently ran the company’s diagnostics and dental divisions.

He is the second Danaher executive KKR has recruited. In 2017, KKR hired Ronald Voigt, who previously ran X-Rite Pantone, a Danaher subsidiary. Voight was eventually named CEO of Hyperion Materials & Technologies after KKR acquired the Worthington, Ohio-based industrial tools maker in 2018 from Sandvik AB for 4 billion Swedish knona ($432 million).

KKR said its upcoming industrial acquisition will be made through its flagship $13.9 billion Americas Fund XII.

All KKR industrial portfolio companies have an employee stock ownership program as an incentive to drive growth, the buyout firm said.

In March, KKR merged Gardner Denver Holdings Inc, a pumps and compressors producer it acquired for $3.9 billion in 2013, with the industrial division of Ingersoll-Rand Plc, creating a new company, Ingersoll Rand Inc , which has a $12 billion market capitalization. KKR has kept a 17% stake in the new company.

(Reporting by Chibuike Oguh in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)