Esko Aho named to Nokia board

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Former Prime Minister, Esko Aho, currently the President of the Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA) will take a post at the electronics company Nokia, and will join the company’s Executive Board at the beginning of 2009. Aho will take the post of Executive Vice President, Corporate Relations and Responsibility. The position currently held by Veli Sundbäck.
     Sundbäck, meanwhile, will leave the board of Nokia at the end of the year, but will stay on as an advisor to the company’s top management until the end of May, when he retires, at the age of 63.
      Aho’s job description will differ somewhat from that of Sundbäck, who has focussed more on foreign operations and trade policy than social relations, which will be Aho’s brief.
     
From the beginning of next year the Executive board of Nokia will include Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Robert Andersson, Simon Beresford-Wylie, Timo Ihamuotila, Mary McDowell, Hallstein Moerk, Tero Ojanperä, Niklas Savander, Rick Simonson, Anssi Vanjoki and Kai Öistämö.
     
Aho had an impressive political career in the Finnish Centre Party, which culminated in becoming Prime Minister just as Finland was falling into a deep recession in 1991. It was under his leadership that Finland joined the European Union.
     He served as a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 2003, and as Chairman of the Centre Party from 1990 to 2002.
     In 2000 he ran for President, and after losing to Tarja Halonen, he spent a year at Harvard University in the United States. After returning to Finland he worked as a consultant from 2003 to 2004, until he took his post at SITRA.
     In a press release, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo praised the outgoing Veli Sundbäck for bringing “valuable experience and knowledge of international affairs, at a time when Nokia was expanding fast into other markets”.
     
Aho said that he is very excited about “the possibility to join a genuinely global company like Nokia. Aho did not want to comment further on the matter on Friday, before travelling to the Beijing Olympics.


Links:
  Nokia press release August 15, 2008: Esko Aho to join Nokia on November 1, 2008 - Veli Sundbäck to retire at the end of May, 2009

Helsingin Sanomat