Mads Nipper steps down as Ørsted CEO

The chief executive officer of Danish offshore wind developer Ørsted, Mads Nipper, has stepped down from his role.

Nipper will step down from the CEO position on February 1 at which time Rasmus Errboe, the current deputy CEO and chief commercial officer, will step into the role of group president and CEO.

Nipper joined Ørsted as the CEO in January 2021. Before that, he was the CEO and group president of Grundfos, the largest pump manufacturer in the world. He also held leading roles at the construction toy production company LEGO.

Errboe joined Ørsted in 2012 and became a member of executive management in 2022. Before being appointed deputy CEO and CCO, he held several high-ranking positions and was responsible for the IPO of Ørsted in 2016 and the divestment and carve-out of Ørsted’s oil and gas business in 2017.

“The renewable energy market has fundamentally changed since January 2021. The impacts on our business of the increasingly challenging situation in the offshore wind industry, ranging from supply chain bottlenecks and interest rate increases to a changing regulatory landscape, mean that our focus has shifted. Therefore, the board has today agreed with Mads Nipper that it’s the right time for him to step down and the board has appointed Rasmus Errboe to take over as CEO,” said Ørsted chairman Lene Skole.

“Ørsted has a strong foundation with unique capabilities, and I’m looking forward to taking the lead on the transformation necessary to navigate the headwinds that Ørsted and our industry currently face,” the new CEO, Errboe, stated.

On his LinkedIn profile, the outgoing CEO said that it has been challenging to lead a company that navigates an industry with countless headwinds over the past few years.

“The board of directors and I have concluded that I am no longer the right profile to lead the next steps of the journey for Ørsted. Simply because there is a need for a different focus than where my core competencies such as shaping industries, customer centricity, and innovation are,” Nipper noted.

He will now be investing more time in the chairmanship of FLSmidth, a company which provides engineering, equipment, and services to the mining and cement industries.