HELSINKI, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Pekka Vauramo, CEO of the Finnish airline Finnair, will switch to the mechanical engineering giant Metso.
In a press release on Monday, he described the decision to leave Finnair as difficult. During Vauramos tenure, Finnair went back to profit and gained success in its Asian strategy.
At the Helsinki stock exchange, the share of Finnair declined slightly and showed a 0.7 percent drop two hours after the announcement.
In the past years, Finnair took also some controversial decisions, such as outsourcing the cabin service of its Hong Kong and Singapore services to Asian recruits in 2015, following unsuccessful attempts to obtain Finnish labor at a lower cost.
Vauramo, 61, joined Finnair in 2013 after a long career in mining, mechanical engineering and international logistics.
Even though state majority owned, Finnair is a public listed company. In the international airline scene, Finnair is part of the Oneworld alliance that includes among others British Airways, American Airlines, Japan Airlines JAL, and Quantas of Australia.
Pekka Spolander, a senior analyst observing Metso, told business daily Kauppalehti that he expected Metso to hire a leader of change but did not think Vauramo would want to leave Finnair.
Spolander noted Vauramo's long career in Cargotec and Sandvik, saying "he knows the mechanical engineering sector well."
Varamo is to start work at Metso in November.
