Percy Barnevik

Percy Barnevik  link LinkedIn (Businessman, deep state operative?)
File:Percy Barnevik.jpg
Born	13 February 1941 Simrishamn, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Alma mater	Gothenburg School of Business Economics and Law, Stanford University
Bilderberg Steering committee member in the Wallenberg Sphere

Percy Barnevik is a Swedish business executive in the Wallenberg Sphere. Probably on behalf of the Wallenberg family, he was a member of the Bilderberg Steering committee. He was a regular at the yearly World Economic Forum meetings in Davos.

Background

Born in Simrishamn in southern Sweden, the youngest of three children, he grew up in Uddevalla, north of Gothenburg, where his parents operated a small printing company. Barnevik was educated at the University of Gothenburg's School of Business, Economics and Law and at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Career

Barnevik started his professional career in the Swedish company Datema, but soon moved to the engineering company Sandvik. In 1975, he was promoted to CEO of Sandvik's American operations, Sandvik Steel. Over the next four years, the company tripled the profit to $ 250 million.

In 1979 he joined ASEA, a leading Swedish industrial company. In 1987, he and his Swiss competitor, Brown Boveri Ltd, decided on the first cross-border large-scale merger in Europe. He was CEO of ASEA from 1980-1987, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) from 1988-1996, Sandvik from 1983-2002, Skanska from 1992-1997,

He was Chairman of Investor AB, the holding company of the Wallenberg family, 1997-2002, AstraZeneca from 1994-2004 and ABB from 1996-2002.

He was a member of the Board of Directors at DuPont, USA, from 1992-1998 and – as the first non–American - at General Motors, USA, from 1996-2009.

During his eight years as CEO of ASEA followed by the nine years as CEO of ABB, the company achieved an increase of stock value of 87 times or 30% average per year over the 17 years. Net profit increased 60 times and sales 30 times. At ABB, he reorganized the organization into Matrix management, which was initially considered a significant management innovation. Later, however, this form of organization was considered to be the cause of the ABB crisis, along with operational and strategic wrong decisions. ABB had grown so much that the coordination effort required in a matrix organization was no longer manageable.

Barnevik received a one-off payment of 148 million Swiss francs when he retired as CEO in 1996. 2002, six years later under a second succeeding CEO, ABB stock market value plummeted from 54.50 francs in 2000 to just under 15 francs. When ABB's board made the pension payment public, a huge scandal ensued and Barnevik was forced to resign as chairman of Investor AB, and to hand back a large chunk of his pension to ABB.

Later activities

In 2003, Barnevik co-founded the charity Hand in Hand with Dr Kalpana Sankar in Tamil Nadu, India, working with microcredits in third-world countries