As a CEO, you can't just cultivate internal candidates who can take over your duties. You also need to know who can quickly replace those in upper management who leave the company out of disappointment at not being able to take over from you.
The short version
- The CEO's job is to encourage internal candidates to take over, but this can cause the losing candidate to resign.
The summary is created with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and quality guaranteed by Aftenposten journalists.
On Thursday the news came Hydro's chief executive, Hilda Mereti Aasheim, is set to retire. It will be her replacement Eyvind Kalevik. He is all CEO In the Aasheim management team. There has become a trend in large companies to choose an internal candidate to take over the position of CEO.
Therefore, it is common to hear from current CEOs that “their most important job is to develop internal candidates.” So that the board of directors, in addition to external candidates, has at least two internal candidates who can compete for the top job.
Disappointed and quit
However, one consequence of cultivating internal competition is that CEO changes often lead to more changes.
An internal candidate who does not make it to the match expires and must be replaced. It usually ends after the announcement of the new CEO. But sometimes the news of their departure comes to the fore.
Because while the outside world doesn't know that, or when the top manager will be changed, the internal candidate knows early on if they have been eliminated from the final.
Is this what happened when Hydro aired a couple of weeks ago From a very short announcement to the stock exchange? Hydro then announced that CFO Pål Kildemo would leave. He goes to a similar job in an aluminum company in the UAE. Keldimo and Kalvik were the obvious internal candidates to take over from Asaheim.
Outside of Equinor and DNB
In the fall of 2020, CFO Lars Bacher and then Group Vice President of Technology, Anders Opedal, were the main internal candidates at Equinor. They were a finalist to take over the CEO role from Eldar Sætre. Ubedal won, Bacher resigned soon after. As the new CEO, Ubedal had to find a new CFO.
Bacher lost in part because Opedal presented more aggressive views regarding Equinor's commitment to renewable energy. Ironically, Bachter today heads a battery company, while Opedal struggles to accelerate Equinor's green investments.
In 2019, it was CFO Kirsten Brathen who was then He won the battle to seize DNB After Ron Berkey.
Corporate Market CEO Benedict Schilbreed-Wassmer was the first Braathen was devastated by the new DNB management and subsequently resigned. Shelbred Wasmer's qualifications couldn't be the problem. Less than a year later, she was CEO at competitor SR-Bank.
– She took the kettle and left
It almost never happens that some of those who go say that it is because they lost in the competition or that they participated and competed at all. They themselves should have won. That it would be very difficult for them to communicate with a former colleague in the management of the group who is now their boss.
And the new CEO, who destroyed his main competitor, never said they couldn't handle having a potential “usurper” so close to them. The title of the message that is sent next is neutral “Changes in group management”.
Almost everyone who leaves says they are looking for new challenges. Therefore, “this is a good time to look to new tasks outside the company.”
The remarkable exception at Yara came in 2008. Sven Ombudstveit, then director of finance and strategy, was not allowed to step up and take over as CEO from Thorleif Inger. Yara's board chose her instead External candidate Ole Jurgen Haslestad.
Grievances Secretary Finished about today After a short conversation with the President.
– The Ombudsman said: – I took the kettle with me from the office and went straight home In a personal interview with DN In 2018.
But the rule is that the losing candidate “looks for new challenges.”
Who stays and leaves Telenor?
Following Aasheim's departure from Hydro, Telenor CEO Sigve Brekke is the next CEO to retire soon. Brickey turns 65 in December.
Jurgen C. Arentz Rostrup, executive vice president of the Nordics at Telenor, is perhaps the hottest candidate to take over from Brickey. For a long time, his long-time colleague in the management of Telenor Group, Peter Bori Vorberg, was Rostrup's main internal rival. But Telenor's CFO today, Hegeland Paschke toneHe appears to have taken up this position in the field.
And Vorberg? He recently announced his resignation as CEO of Telenor And
He will become CEO of Posten Norge.
Does this mean that Forberg already realized last fall that he was eliminated in the final round at Telenor? We probably wouldn't know. In the message following the announcement of Furberg's job change to Posten, he said “I want to try something new and this is a dream job in my opinion.”
Will Rostrup or Bakke stay at Telenor if the other gets the job? Or if they are outperformed by an external candidate on the side that preceded him? That remains to be seen.
But if Sigve Bryke has done his job, he has also cultivated good candidates who can quickly move up in the management of the group. Someone who can take over the day when one or both of the internal candidates are too disappointed to stay at Telenor with a new CEO other than himself.
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