Career
Prior to joining Nokia in 1985, Ollila worked for eight years in corporate banking at Citibank's London and Helsinki offices, and when he joined Nokia his tasks involved international investment deals. A year later, in 1986, Ollila found himself as head of finance during Nokia's renewal under then CEO Kari Kairamo. He was appointed as chief of the mobile phones section in 1990, and CEO two years later in 1992. When Ollila first came to power, the company had suffered from internal disputes and had had a financial crisis for a number of years.
As CEO of Nokia he has led the strategy that restructured the former industrial conglomerate into one of the major companies in the mobile phone and telecommunications infrastructure markets.
In 1999, Ollila seriously considered taking part in the Finnish presidential election, following a request from a member of the National Coalition Party, Sauli Niinistö who was at that time Finnish finance minister and who later became Speaker of the Finnish Parliament. This was in spite the fact that Ollila belongs to a different party, the Finnish Centre party, which he has been involved with since his activities in student politics at the University of Helsinki.
He was CEO of Nokia from 1999 to 2006. He was succeeded as CEO by Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. On 15 September 2010, he announced he intended to step down from the position of Chairman in 2012 and did so on 3 May 2012.
Ollila is the Chairman of the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA), the most reputed economic and social studies think tank in Finland. Since 2005, he is chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT).
Ollila is the first non-Dutch or non-British person to be the Chairman of Shell. He is also the first Chairman chosen for this multinational corporation in its new corporate form of Royal Dutch Shell.
Read more about this topic: Jorma Ollila
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