AB Electrolux chief financial officer Tomas Eliasson is resigning to take another job, less than two weeks after the firm’s CEO announced his retirement following the collapse of a deal to buy General Electric Co’s (GE) appliance business.
Eliasson, 53, has been appointed chief financial officer of Sandvik AB, the world’s largest maker of cutting tools, and is to leave Electrolux to take up his new position no later than July, Stockholm-based Sandvik said in a statement yesterday.
Electrolux has begun looking for Eliasson’s replacement, the appliance maker said in a separate statement.
Eliasson’s departure comes after the collapse of what would have been Electrolux’s largest acquisition to date, a planned US$3.3 billion takeover of the GE business. GE pulled out of the deal because of opposition from US antitrust regulators, and later agreed to sell the unit to China’s Haier Group (海爾) for US$5.4 billion.
Electrolux on Jan. 11 said that Keith McLoughlin would retire as CEO and move back to the US after GE’s decision to walk away from the deal, which Electrolux had pursued to gain scale in the US market.
The company went to court to fight the US Department of Justice’s claims that the combined company and rival Whirlpool Corp would be dominant in US cooking appliances. The trial was under way in Washington when GE announced on Dec. 7 last year it was abandoning the plan because of regulatory opposition.
Sandvik has undergone an executive overhaul since Johan Molin took over as chairman in May last year. In November last year, Bjoern Rosengren, the former CEO of Finnish engine maker Wartsila Oyj Abp, took the same job at Sandvik, replacing Olof Faxander. Eliasson replaces Mats Backman, who is joining Autoliv Inc.
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