Oldest Director Steps Down From Danaher Board at Age 96

Mortimer Caplin, the former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service who became the oldest director of a Standard & Poor’s 500 Index company, plans to step down from the board of Danaher Corp in May.

Caplin, 96, told the company Feb. 8 that he won’t stand for re-election at the May 7 annual meeting, and will step down after the session, the Washington-based provider of measurement and diagnostic equipment said today in a regulatory filing.

A founder of Caplin & Drysdale, a Washington law firm, he graduated from the University of Virginia in 1937 with a bachelor’s degree, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The IRS commissioner from 1961 to 1964, he joined the Danaher board in 1990 and was identified in a 2011 Bloomberg article on corporate directors as the oldest in the U.S.

“It’s a question of competence,” Caplin said in an interview for that story. “In a way, I feel age is irrelevant.”

Matt McGrew, vice president, investor relations at Danaher, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Caplin didn’t immediately respond to a message at the law office.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zachary Tracer in New York at ztracer1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Kraut at dkraut2@bloomberg.net