Dramatic movements near the polar circle

Jorma Terentjeff, who carefully headed the Finnish-based JOT Automation to its breakthrough as worldwide acting enterprise, has resigned from his position as CEO and president. Mr. Terentjeff, who holds the biggest stake of shares, remains on the board of directors with strategic projects as main area of responsibility. The board has appointed deputy-managing director Teijo Fabritius as CEO, and elected Mika Kettula (formerly president JOT USA) as chairman of the board.Obviously, the capitalized value of the company, listed at the Helsinki stock exchange, has dropped dramatically (about 85% to euro 380m). But JOT isn’t a dotcom. Instead it’s a hardware-oriented, solid supplier of automation equipment of all kinds for electronics manufacturing. And it isn’t burning money, still makes profit but didn’t fully reach the goals projected. Then a dramatic down circle followed which has hard hit many companies with punishment from the stock market (analysts and investors are no longer favorably focused on high-techs). It seems that Mr. Terentjeff in his role as former CEO has taken responsibility for that development at JOT. To date, the group has subsidiaries, partners and representatives in 14 countries, employs 750 people, and its net sales reached about 145m euro. An extraordinary meeting of shareholders decided to fix the number of the board members to five instead of three, and elected two new members. These are investment director Jari Eklund and CEO Tapio Tammi. Mika Kettula, Juha Sipilä and Jorma Terentjeff will continue as members of the board. Moreover, a management executive team will co-ordinate strategic operations of the business units. President Teijo Fabritius, who is also responsible for sales and marketing, will chair this team. In addition, the executive team will include three VPs, Jari Lotvonen (responsible for production), Mika Mämmelä (product development and planning), and Pertti Tarvainen, responsible for financial administration. Furthermore, Peka Jolanki has been appointed sales director, with responsibility for global sales and representative network.

According to the company, the changes will clarify the sharing of tasks within the group, and render decision making more efficient. At the same time, the focus of strategic planning is directed to the business units acting at the user side. This will enable more flexible co-operation with customers, and promote the adaptation of business operations to the needs of various market areas. With American Adept Technology, JOT has recently started an OEM partnership. Under this agreement, JOT will integrate Adept’s robotics, control and optical equipment in its manufacturing cells and systems. It also includes co-operation in product development, as well as integrated design of solutions. Its objective is to promote the standardization of JOT’s product and system concept, and to provide customers with more comprehensive solutions. In Europe, JOT has now established a subsidiary in Romania, in order to sell, market and support its solutions in this emerging country and provide after-sales services. (gbw)

EPP 209