Anders Runevad, the 53-year-old Swede who takes over at the helm of Vestas on 1 September, has worked in the telecommunications industry for Ericsson for the past 28 years.
Vestas chairman Bert Nordberg is also a former employee of Ericsson, holding the position of CEO at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications in Sweden until last year.
Following his graduation with a masters degree in electrical engineering from the University of Lund in Sweden, Runevad joined Ericsson in 1985 as an electrical engineer.
Since then he has held a number of senior positions with the company, including president of its Singapore and Brazil divisions. Most recently he was president of the west and central Europe division and a member of the global executive team. He left Ericsson in June.
Moving to a new company in an unfamiliar industry clearly represents a formidable challenge for Runevad, especially since Vestas has been dogged in recent years by legal battles and painful restructuring programmes, culminating in today's dismissal of CEO Ditlev Engel.
But Vestas appears confident that Runevad’s engineering background and his business-to-business experience with complex infrastructure projects in international environments make him the right man for the job.
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