Why Fresenius Medical Care shares fell 6.85%: the board replaced CEO Helen Giza with Shervin Korangy

Fresenius Medical Care shares closed 6.85% lower at €37.42 on Xetra on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, the worst performance in the DAX, after the company said its Supervisory Board had unanimously appointed Shervin J. Korangy as chief executive from October 12 and that Helen Giza would leave at the end of October 11. The ad hoc announcement reached the MoveSurge news feed at 16:54:59 CEST (10:54:59 ET), and the stock went from €41.33 in the minute before to €40.30 a minute later and €38.29 fifteen minutes later, a 7.36% drop. Measured from that last pre-announcement price, the close was 9.46% lower. The MoveSurge reaction reading, taken from a broker contract that tracks the shares, had them 3.27% lower after one minute and 6.15% lower after ten.

The announcement gave no reason for Giza's departure. Handelsblatt reported that the parting was not by mutual agreement and that the Supervisory and Management Boards decided on it unanimously. Korangy, 51, had been a member of the Supervisory Board and resigned from it to take the job.

Why investors were caught off guard

Giza had run the company for almost four years, after three years as finance chief, and her cost programme was delivering: the October 7 release credits the FME25+ plan with cutting the cost base by around €1.2 billion. Removing a chief executive whose savings target had been met reads, to the market, as a verdict on growth rather than on costs. Handelsblatt, citing people in the company, reported that the board saw no convincing growth strategy, that US treatment volumes had stagnated and that DaVita, the largest US dialysis competitor, had grown faster. JPMorgan analyst David Adlington called both the news and its timing surprising, coming right after a quarter that investors had already feared would be difficult, according to dpa-AFX.

Michael Sen chairs the Fresenius Medical Care Supervisory Board and is also chief executive of Fresenius SE, which holds 25% plus one share after selling about 7.8 million Fresenius Medical Care shares for roughly €300 million on August 20, 2026. Sen said the company was at a turning point, and the release describes the new chief as bringing a different leadership profile.

Who Shervin Korangy is

His career runs through restructuring, private equity and a private-equity-owned device company, which is a different background from Giza's finance-led tenure. The announcement left the 2026 outlook unchanged, according to dpa-AFX.

How the shares traded

The stock kept falling through the last half hour of Xetra trading, touching a low of €36.71, down as much as 8.6% on the day according to dpa-AFX, before closing at €37.42. The New York-listed ADRs fell almost 7%, Investing.com reported. The chart below shows the first fifteen minutes after the announcement reached the MoveSurge news feed.