The inertia of C-class management thinking is a well-known phenomenon. Two C-class managers of Danish multinational wind turbine company Ørsted, CFO Daniel Lerup and COO Richard Hunter, are stepping down from their positions. The officially communicated reason is the abandonment of several offshore projects and associated write-offs worth $4 billion.
Readers of PressClub World have of course known for some time that wind turbine manufacturers and developers will sooner or later go into Zombie mode.
Scapegoats were found in the top management of the major wind developer Ørsted. The reality is that the main culprit of the problems of the entire sector and of Ørsted is not the CFO, nor the COO. The industry itself is the culprit.
The Financial Times published today: Ørsted is shaking up its management team in an effort to fix its problems after the world’s largest wind developer abandoned key projects in the US and wrote down the value of its portfolio by DKr28.4bn ($4bn).
Daniel Lerup, finance chief, and Richard Hunter, chief operating officer, are leaving with immediate effect, the company announced on Tuesday, about two weeks after it said it was walking away from the two offshore wind projects off the coast of New Jersey.
Copenhagen-listed Ørsted has been hit by rising costs, which have created problems for projects in the US in particular.
Mads Nipper, chief executive, said Ørsted was “along with the rest of the industry . . . experiencing a challenging and volatile business environment” and needed “new and different capabilities”.
Rasmus Errboe, chief executive of Ørsted’s European business, will serve as interim finance chief. Andrew Brown, a member of Ørsted’s board, will become interim chief operating officer.
Changes in management are irrelevant. Investors, capital markets, analysts will understand the fate of the entire wind turbine industry only after they become familiar with the new zero-emission technology, which PressClub World readers are already familiar with.
And now for some positive news: The first version to be launched on the market is a version specially designed as a supplement to already existing PV power systems.
Source: The Financial Times
