Haiger, February 2026 – After 25 years of dedicated service, Stephan Pittner has decided to retire from his position as CEO of the CLOOS Group. Throughout his career at CLOOS, Stephan Pittner held various functions and leadership positions and made a significant contribution to the company’s success. The shareholders and management thank Stephan Pittner for his outstanding commitment and his lasting impact on the development of the CLOOS Group.
As part of this management transition, the shareholders of ESTUN as the owners of the CLOOS Group, have appointed Alex Waser as new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Alex Waser brings extensive international leadership experience, having served almost 12 years as CEO of Bystronic and, in recent years, holding various board positions.
“I am honored by the trust placed in me and look forward to shaping the next chapter of the CLOOS Group together with the team,” says Alex Waser.
As CEO, Alex Waser will focus on integrating the global growth strategy and defining the next level of development for the CLOOS Group, building on its strong technological foundation and market position.
In parallel, Lei Guan has been appointed Chief Financial Officer (CFO). This marks the first time CLOOS has created a global CFO role, underlining the company’s continued growth and increasing international integration. Lei Guan has more than 18 years of financial experience with leading international consulting and auditing organizations and has worked in Germany for the past 10 years, with strong expertise in cross‑border transactions.
“My goal is to support the group’s growth by strengthening financial transparency, synergies, and collaboration across all entities,” says Lei Guan.
As a native Chinese speaker, Lei Guan will also facilitate close and efficient communication with the shareholders in China.
With this new management structure, the CLOOS Group is well positioned to strengthen collaboration across its global entities, leverage synergies within the group and with ESTUN, and continue its path of sustainable international growth.
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CLOOS Group is an international company with its headquarters in Haiger. With over 1000 employees worldwide, CLOOS supplies welding know-how for industrial applications with the highest demands on durability and quality in efficiency-driven industries As a global product and solution brand, CLOOS combines specialised knowledge from welding applications, robotics, automation and software in customised solutions for medium-sized companies as well as for large international automotive, commercial vehicle and agricultural machinery manufacturers In doing so, CLOOS not only provides the decisive technical production advantage in order to produce competitively in the long term, but also faces the challenges of tomorrow as a problem solver together with its customers today. With 10 production sites and more than 60 sales and service centres - including North and South America, Asia and Australia - customers worldwide rely on solutions from CLOOS.