Aker Arctic announces reshuffle, MD Niini steps down
After the acquisition of 66,4 % of the shares by Finnish Industry Investment Ltd (fully owned by the State of Finland) Aker Arctic Technology Inc.’s extraordinary shareholders’ meeting today appointed the new Board of Directors for the Company. The Board members are Ole Johansson, Juha Koskela (ABB Oy), Antti Kummu (Finnish Industry Investment), Valborg Lundegaard (Aker Engineering & Technology A/S) and Juha Marjosola (Finnish Industry Investment). Ole Johansson was nominated Chairman and Juha Marjosola Vice-Chairman of the Board, the Company said Wednesday in a press release.
Mr. Ole Johansson, BSc (Econ.) served as the President&CEO of Wärtsilä Corporation from 2000 to 2011. He is the Chairman of eQ Oyj and member of the Board of Svenska Handelsbanken AB.
Since Mr. Mikko Niini, reaching soon the age of 68, has made the decision to retire from the Managing Director position the Board of Directors appointed Mr. Reko-Antti Suojanen Managing Director as of today. Mikko Niini´s employment with the company continues until the end of February 2014. “Mikko has done a great job for Aker Arctic, building the Company from its foundation in 2004 into a recognized provider and developer of maritime solutions for the ice covered and arctic waters. His ambition for maritime business and development is strong and valuable and we are looking forward to having him in an advisory position also in the future” says Ole Johansson. “Reko-Antti Suojanen has served as Research and Development Manager for Aker Arctic and has also been leading many major client projects. He has a broad experience in the business area and will together with his Management Team further continue to lead the operations of the Company in developing innovative and attractive solutions for the customers”.
Mr. Reko-Antti Suojanen (44) graduated from Helsinki University of Technology (today Aalto University) in 1997. He started his professional career at Kvaerner Masa-Yards Turku New Shipyard in 1996 with hydrodynamic tasks and developing computational fluid dynamic codes. In 1997-1998 he served as specialist engineer for CFD services at the Finnish Supercomputing Centre before he in 1998 joined Kvaerner Masa-Yards’ Arctic Research Center, the predecessor of Aker Arctic. He attended ship design and tasks in ice model testing, was responsible for simulation models and transportation economics predictions as well as for issues related to ship hydrodynamics.
Since 2005 he has been a member of Aker Arctic´s Management Team, leading first the consultancy activities until nomination to R&D Manager in 2008. In these roles he has led the company´s own research and development activities as well as many major Aker Arctic’s client projects.