Percy Barnevik

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Percy Nils Barnevik (born February 13, 1941 in Simrishamn ) is a Swedish manager . From 1988 to 2002 he was a board member and later chairman of the board of directors of the Swiss energy and automation technology group Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) and was at the center of a severance scandal in 2003.

Life

Barnevik was born in Simrishamn, southern Sweden, as the youngest of three children, and grew up in Uddevalla, north of Gothenburg , where his parents ran a small print shop. He studied at Gothenburg University and Stanford Graduate School of Business and received seven honorary doctorates in Sweden, Finland and the USA, including Linköping University (1989) and Gothenburg University (1992). Barnevik was awarded the IEEE Ernst Weber Managerial Leadership Recognition in 1993 for outstanding management performance.

Career

In 1975 Barnevik was promoted to CEO of Sandviks American's steel division . Over the next four years, the company tripled profits to $ 250 million. During his work in the USA, Sandvik, like General Electric and US Steel , kept their distance from him.

In 1979 he moved to ASEA, a leading Swedish industrial company in Västerås . In 1987, he and his Swiss competitor, Brown Boveri Ltd, decided to start the first major cross-border merger in Europe. He was CEO of ASEA from 1980–1987, Asea Brown Boveri from 1988–1996, of Sandvik from 1983–2002, of Skanska from 1992–1997, of Investor AB , part of the Wallenberg Group , 1997–2002, of AstraZeneca from 1994–2004 and at ABB from 1996–2002. He served on the board of directors at DuPont , USA, from 1992–1998 and, as the first non-American, at General Motors , USA, from 1996–2009, and was a member of the Bilderberg Conference from 1992–2001.

At ABB he introduced the matrix organization , which was initially seen as a significant management innovation. Later, however, this form of organization was seen as the cause of the ABB crisis, along with incorrect operational and strategic decisions. ABB had grown so much that the coordination effort required in a matrix organization was no longer manageable. After differences of opinion about the further development of ABB, Barnevik left the company in 2002 and received a tax-deductible payment in his pension assets of CHF 148 million, which was heavily criticized in public. In the end, he paid back CHF 89 million.

Later he worked in the aid organization "Hand in Hand", which grants microcredits in developing countries.

Personal

Barnevik lives in London. In an interview, he announced that a test found him unfit for a managerial position.

Memberships

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ manager magazin online - The end of a legend? Retrieved September 13, 2013 .
  2. ↑ faz.net: Mistakes and intrigues overthrow Percy Barnevik, accessed September 19, 2013
  3. ↑ www.zeit.de: The permanent revolution, accessed on September 25, 2013
  4. ↑ www.handelszeitung.ch: Organizational forms the crux with the matrix, accessed on September 25, 2013
  5. ↑ www.manager-magazin.de: What is Percy Barnevik actually doing, accessed on September 19, 2013
  6. ↑ www.zeit.de: Cashed millions, helped millions
  7. ↑ http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/percy-barnevik-jag-var-olamplig-som-chef
  8. ^ Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences: Barnevik, Percy . Ivawebb.se. Archived from the original on October 7, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 13, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ivawebb.se
  9. ↑ Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B (PDF; 726 kB) American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 17, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Barnevik, Percy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barnevik, Percy Nils (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish manager
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Simrishamn