Swedish industrialist named new TeliaSonera CEO

Lars Nyberg praised as "visionary"

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The Finnish and Swedish-owned telecommunications company TeliaSonera announced on Friday that renowned Swedish industrialist Lars Nyberg will be the company's new CEO. Nyberg is well known in Sweden as a major figure in industry, who has an extensive international career behind him.
      Nyberg replaces Anders Igel, who was removed by the company's Board of Directors in June. The Board did not believe that Igel would be able to generate growth for the company.
      The choice of Lars Nyberg came unexpectedly quickly. In June Chairman of the Board Tom von Weymarn predicted that the search would take up to ten months.
     
Igel was criticised for a lack of vision. In Nyberg, von Weymarn says that TeliaSonera will get a charismatic and strong-willed leader "who has drive".
      On Friday, Nyberg did not want to define what his own vision is, saying that he first wants to acquaint himself better with the company. "It would be rather arrogant to express any thoughts on this now. Our company has 28,000 employees, who have years of experience in the business", he said on Friday.
      Nyberg has not worked for any telecommunications service providers before, although he used to work for the US computer software producer NCR, which was owned briefly by the telephone giant AT&T. During his career he has had many large telecom operators as clients, especially while working at NCR; dealing with them has been an educational experience.
      "I got a good impression of the activities of SBC, BellSouth, Verizon, China Mobile, British Telecom, and France Telecom", Nyberg said.
     
The board of TeliaSonera hopes that Nyberg will turn the company into a "genuine service company". TeliaSonera must not think that its task is to maintain telephone connections, for instance. Instead, it needs to help its customers communicate better.
      Nyberg dies not seem to be afraid of rapid changes of direction, or of taking tough measures. In the mid-1990s he eliminated more than 10,000 jobs in NCR, soon after taking the helm there.
      The TeliaSonera Board has said that the company is primarily looking for a visionary leader, rather than a downsizer. However, Nyberg emphasised on Friday that the company must not spread out its resources too much, and that it must make choices.
      "TeliaSonera must not have greater structural costs than its other, more aggressive competitors."
      TeliaSonera published its April-June result on Friday. The net result declined to EUR 466 million from the EUR 513 million posted at the same time last year.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  TeliaSonera board removes CEO Anders Igel (13.6.2007)
  TeliaSonera announces more spending cuts (25.4.2007)
  State representatives push through new board for TeliaSonera (18.1.2007)
  Power struggle leads to reshuffle of TeliaSonera board (11.12.2007)
  TeliaSonera to abandon country-based organisation structure (16.11.2006)
  TeliaSonera cuts bonuses of Finnish managers after unsatisfactory year (22.3.2006)

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