Ericsson Chairman Treschow to Step Down by End of 2012

Michael Treschow, chairman of Ericsson AB (ERIC), will step down by the end of 2012.

The company will appoint a successor at one of the next two annual shareholder meetings, Bloomberg News reported. Treschow, 67, took the position in March 2002.

"This is something that has grown inside me since the latter part of the fall," Treschow told Bloomberg News. "Nine years is a long time. The company is also very stable and in good shape. The combination probably makes for a good time to find somebody else."

Sponsored Links

Treschow took over after the company reported its first full-year loss in more than 50 years in 2001. The company sold $4.4 billion in stock and slashed its workforce to boost profits.

Ericsson said in October that third-quarter profit jumped almost fivefold from a year earlier.

"The best accomplishment was probably to navigate Ericsson out of the crisis in 2002," Treschow said. "At that time we had to go from 110,000 employees to 40,000 employees in about two years time. To be able to do that without actually dying in the process was the biggest achievement in my time."