Ørsted nominates Lene Skole as new chair, the energy company announces on Monday afternoon. The former vice chair is thus set to take over from Thomas Thune Andersen, who announced his resignation in connection with the annual accounts last week after ten years at the helm.

”I’ve worked closely with Lene over many years, and as I step down, I’m very happy that the evaluation of candidates has confirmed that Lene is best suited to take over as chair and take the recently announced business plan forward together with the rest of the board and the group executive team,” says the outgoing chairman.

The resignation comes one week after the convening of the annual general meeting on March 5, where the election will be formalized. However, the pieces have had to fall into place - internally as well as externally.

While Lene Skole is no stranger to Ørsted’s boardrooms, where she has been vice chair since 2015, it’s not her only commitment. For even longer - since 2014 - she has been the CEO of Lundbeckfonden. As well as being vice chair of the board of Scandinavia’s largest bank, Nordea.

Lundbeckfonden confirms that Skole will continue as CEO, while Nordea has not responded to EnergyWatch’s inquiry at the time of writing. However, the bank itself has not announced anything about Skole stepping down from the board. 

Ørsted, however, writes in the announcement that the new chairman has ”clarified her possibility of being available as chairman of the board, and this has now been confirmed.”

Executives still missing, board slimmed down

However, deciding on the chair has not been the only piece of the puzzle. By promoting Lene Skole, a new vice chairman must also be found. The energy company points to the former CEO of Portuguese Galp, Andrew Brown, who was elected to Ørsted’s board of directors last year. 

However, he cannot hold the position of vice chairman while maintaining day-to-day operations. Since Richard Hunter was dismissed following the announcement of the billion-dollar write-down in November, Andrew Brown has been acting as chief operating officer. He will, however, relinquish this position at the end of March, Ørsted says.

This still leaves a few major issues for the troubled company. Three months after both Richard Hunter and CFO Daniel Lerup left, permanent replacements have not yet been found. While the temporary treasurer, Rasmus Errboe, has made it clear that his position is temporary.

However, one last piece of the puzzle has been solved. Not only Thomas Thune Andersen will be stepping down from the Ørsted board at next week’s general meeting. The same goes for the non-executive member Jørgen Kildahl. His replacement has been quite easy for the utility company to find, as the seventh board position is temporarily abolished.

Translated using DeepL with additional editing by Kristoffer Grønbæk