Bruker Corp. (NSDQ:BRKR) director Collin D’Silva resigned his seat to take the helm of a new chemical analysis business based in California.
Earlier this week the Billerica, Mass.-based scientific instruments maker announced that D’Silva would cede his seat on its board of director’s audit committee. As it turns out, that was just the prelude to D’Silva stepping down from the board entirely to become division president of the Fremont, Calif.-based chemical analysis division of Bruker Daltonics.
The new business will incorporate the three Varian Inc. units Bruker bought from Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) earlier this month. Agilent needs to divest those businesses to meet European anti-trust requirements for its $1.5 billion buyout of Varian. Bruker bought Varian’s global inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry instruments business in Melbourne, Australia, the company’s global laboratory gas chromatography instruments business in Middelburg, the Netherlands, and Varian’s global gas chromatography triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry instruments business in Walnut Creek, Calif.
D’Silva’s resignation from the audit committee and full board, which he joined in 2000, frees him to lead the new Bruker business. His resumé includes tenures as chairman and CEO of Transgenomic Inc., president and CEO of CETAC Technologies Inc. and a stint at AT&T Network Systems.
The resignations aren’t all good news for Bruker, however, as D’Silva’s absence gives the company 180 days, or until Sept. 7, to find someone to replace him on the board lest it risk de-listing from the NASDAQ stock exchange. Bruker said it intends to regain compliance within the 180-day "cure period."