Picture: Hannibal Hanschke Picture: Hannibal Hanschke
Paris - Electrolux AB said Chief Executive Officer Keith McLoughlin has decided to retire following the collapse last month of the Swedish manufacturer’s $3.3 billion deal to buy General Electric’s household goods business.
He will be replaced by Jonas Samuelson, who heads major appliance operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The new CEO’s “focus will be to continue executing the Electrolux strategy of becoming a truly consumer driven company leveraging our global scale”, Chairman Ronnie Leten said in a statement on Monday.
Electrolux pursued the GE deal to gain scale in the US market and had decided to go to court to fight the US Justice Department’s claims that the combined company and rival Whirlpool would be overly dominant in the US cooking-appliance area. The deal was first announced in September 2014 and a trial was under way in Washington when the two companies announced December 7 they were abandoning the plan.
The company’s shares gained 0.4 percent to 195.90 kronor as of 9.03am in Stockholm, valuing the business at 60.5 billion kronor ($7.1 billion).
Samuelson, who joined Electrolux in 2008, has also held the roles of head of global operations and group chief financial officer, according to the statement. McLoughlin, who plans to return to live in the US “will continue to support Electrolux in the North American market on a consultancy basis”.
After the collapse of the GE deal, Electrolux unveiled a plan to cut costs and jobs at its small-appliance unit, which it said was unrelated. The manufacturer paid GE a breakup fee of $175 million, and said the transaction and integration costs from the failed deal would be about 175 million kronor ($20.6 million) in the fourth quarter while expenses related to a bridge loan would be 225 million kronor.
The GE deal would have allowed Electrolux, the maker of Frigidaire appliances, to better compete with Whirlpool and Asian manufacturers. GE said it abandoned the accord because of opposition from US antitrust regulators, who had sued to block the transaction.
BLOOMBERG