AlixPartners Expanding its Nordic Practice
LONDON (18 March 2008) – The global credit crisis is one big reason why AlixPartners, the international business-advisory firm known for its work a few years ago in the turnaround of Stolt Offshore SA (now known as Acergy SA), is stepping up its presence in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia. Co-leading that effort is Leif Christian Salomonsen, the former chief executive officer of both Raufoss ASA and Kværner ASA, who has joined AlixPartners as a managing director.
For the last seven years, Salomonsen had been providing restructuring services to international industrial companies through his own consulting firm, Gracchus AB, operating out of Sweden. Before that, he served as a senior consultant in Norway and Sweden as a managing partner at Interforum Partners AS. He started his career with BP PLC and worked 19 years with Norsk Hydro ASA, first in its oil and gas division (now listed as StatoilHydro ASA) and then in the agriculture division (now listed as Yara ASA). He now joins Joachim Palmé of AlixPartners in heading the firm’s Scandinavian work, for healthy companies as well as stressed ones.
“AlixPartners is a firm with a truly stellar reputation, both in North America and now throughout much of Europe,” said Salomonsen, “and I’m both pleased and honored to be joining them. The global credit crunch is putting all-new pressures, operational as well as financial, on companies of all sorts in this region, no matter what their state of health. And AlixPartners, with its quarter century of experience, is expert at helping companies and their owners deal with exactly those kinds pressures effectively.”
To date, AlixPartners’ work in Scandinavia numbers more than 20 distinct engagements. Danish clients have included the furniture retailer ILVA. Swedish clients have included Thule, a world leader in sports/utility transportation; Tech Data, a leading distributor of IT products in the Nordic region and part of a U.S.-based group with global sales of more than USD 20 billion; and Sandvik, the global tooling, mining and construction company. Meantime, AlixPartners served as interim chief financial officer of Nokia Siemens Networks, the Finnish-German telecom, during and after that joint venture’s creation last year.
“AlixPartners has the experience to serve both healthy and distressed companies throughout Scandinavia,” said Palmé. “And with Leif Salomonsen now on board, we have a team that is second to none in its ability to deliver real, lasting results to our clients in this region.”
“We are pleased that Leif has joined AlixPartners,” said Michael Grindfors, AlixPartners’ chief executive officer and himself a Scandinavian, from Sweden. “He is a seasoned and trusted professional with a proven track-record in the industrial space who will provide both strategic and hands-on turnaround counsel to our clients.”
About AlixPartners
AlixPartners is a global restructuring, consulting, and financial advisory services firm. The firm has more than 700 employees, and offices in Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Düsseldorf, London, Los Angeles, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Tokyo. It is on the Web at www.alixpartners.com.
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