Telenor’s nomination committee has put forward Nordea executive Gunn Wærsted to be the company’s new chair. If her appointment is approved, she would fill the void left by Svein Aaser, who was forced to resign from the post at the end of October
Telenor’s (OSE:TEL) nomination committee has put forward Nordea executive Gunn Wærsted to be the company’s new chair.
If her appointment is approved by Telenor’s corporate assembly, she would fill the void left by Svein Aaser, who resigned from the post at the end of October.
Wærsted is on Nordea’s group management team as an executive vice president and country senior executive in Nordea Bank Norway.
She has spent her career in financial services, with previously positions as CEO of SpareBank 1 Gruppen and the SpareBank 1 Alliansen, group executive vice president of DNB and CEO of Vital Forsikring. She is currently chair of state-owned petroleum group Petoro and has previously been a board member of Statoil, Statkraft and Ferd Holding.
Aaser’s resignation as Telenor chair was forced by the Norwegian government, the operator’s 54% majority shareholder, which declared it had no confidence in him.
Industry minister Monica Mæland made the declaration after receiving new information about corruption allegations against VimpelCom in Uzbekistan that Telenor should have already disclosed to herself and Norway’s Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs.
The dismissal came less than a month after Telenor announced it would sell its entire 33% stake in VimpelCom, saying that its “challenging” investment in the CIS-focused telco had contributed less and less to the value of the group.
Telenor has also ended its consultancy agreement with former CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas as investigations into what the company knew about corruption at VimpelCom intensified.
Elsewhere, Telenor’s CFO Richard Olav Aa and general counsel Pål Wien Espen, along with the Norwegian operator’s nominees on VimpelCom’s supervisory board, have been temporarily relieved of their duties as auditor Deloitte reviews of Telenor’s handling of its VimpelCom ownership stake. Telenor said its decision to relinquish the executives of their duties was not due to any suspicions about their actions.
