LONDON – Nokia, the Telecom equipment supplier giant on Thursday, named a new finance chief, the company said in a statement.
Marco Wirén, the CFO, will assume charge on September 1, 2020, by replacing outgoing finance chief Kristian Pullola.
However, Pullola will remain with the company until the end of the year to aid the transition. He has been with Nokia for 21 years and was named CFO in 2017.
Wirén is currently president of Wärtsilä Energy and executive vice president of Wärtsilä Group. The CFO appointment comes as Nokia, the world’s second-largest telecom equipment producer behind China’s Huawei Technologies, prepares for a new CEO.
Along with Sweden’s Ericsson, Nokia is one of Huawei’s biggest competitors amid the shift to the fifth generation of cellular networking technology, commonly known as 5G.
The move to 5G, which had been slower than expected, is touted as a crucial building block to advances in everything from mobile phones to driverless vehicles and automated warehouses.
During the first three months of the year, Nokia saw sales slip 2% to 4.9 billion euros ($5.6 billion).