Waiblingen, 16.04.2026 | Press Release

At its meeting on April 15, 2026, the Supervisory Board of STIHL AG appointed Dr. Ulrich Braig as the new Executive Board Member responsible for Human Resources and Legal Affairs. He will succeed Dr. Michael Prochaska, who will retire on August 31, 2026. Dr. Braig will join STIHL as a member of the Executive Board on June 1, 2026, and will assume responsibility for the Human Resources and Legal Affairs division effective September 1, 2026. The Supervisory Board has initially appointed him to the Executive Board for a term of three years.

“We would like to thank our long-standing Executive Board Member for Human Resources and Legal Affairs for his outstanding contributions to STIHL,” said Dr. Nikolas Stihl, Chairman of the STIHL Advisory Board and Supervisory Board. Dr. Michael Prochaska assumed responsibility for the Human Resources and Legal Affairs division of the STIHL Group in January 2012. “Over the past nearly 15 years, Dr. Prochaska has played a pivotal role in supporting our growth and shaping the forward-looking development of the STIHL Group.”

Commenting on the succession, Dr. Stihl added: “With Dr. Ulrich Braig, we are welcoming an outstanding executive to our family-owned business. As a lawyer with a doctoral degree, he brings extensive HR leadership experience from both family-owned and publicly listed companies. In addition, he has a strong track record in driving large-scale transformation initiatives.”

Dr. Ulrich Braig was born on November 26, 1971, in Günzburg, Germany. He is married and has two children. Throughout his career, he has held a range of senior HR leadership roles, including positions focusing on co-determination matters, Head of Human Resources, Group Head of Human Resources, and Head of Personnel and Social Affairs at companies such as IBM and Körber AG. Most recently, since 2020, Dr. Braig has served as Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at GEA Group AG in Düsseldorf.

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