Dive Brief:

• Danish energy company Orsted appointed Trond Westlie as its new CFO effective April 1, according to a Tuesday press release. The move comes several weeks after the company detailed a new strategic plan with the goal of recovering from significant losses posted by the offshore wind developer last year.
• As it marshals its turnaround plans, the Fredericia, Denmark-based company also appointed Patrick Harnett, presently serving as its head of European execution programmes to serve as its chief operational officer, also effective April 1, according to the release.
• In their new roles, the two executives will “bring strong international financial skills and execution skills to the Group Executive Team and support the successful implementation of the strategy plan we announced” on Feb. 7, Thomas Thune Andersen, chair of Orsted’s board of directors, said in a statement included in the release.

Dive Insight:

Westlie will assume his role from interim CFO Rasmus Errboe, while Harnett will take over from interim COO Andrew Brown, the company said Tuesday. Both interim leaders will step down at the end of March, with Errboe to resume his role as CEO of Orsted’s Europe Region, while Orsted has recommended Brown be elected as deputy chair for its board of directors at its next general meeting on March 5, the company said.

The permanent leadership appointments of both Westlie and Harnett come after the company’s previous CFO and COO both stepped down from their roles “by mutual agreement” in November, when Errboe and Brown assumed the interim roles. The departures followed a rocky year for the world’s largest offshore wind developer, which operates offshore wind farms off the shores of Conneticut, New Jersey and Maryland in the U.S., CFO Dive previously reported. Last year it reported revenues of 79.3 Danish kroner, according to its website.

Several weeks before its former CFO, Daniel Lerup and its ex-COO, Richard Hunter, departed, Orsted reported an impairment of Danish kroner 28.4 billion for the first nine months of last year, citing challenges including supply chain hiccups and rising interest rates.  

The impairment losses were also connected to Orsted’s decision to scrap both its Ocean 1 and Ocean 2 projects in the U.S., farms off the coast in New Jersey which would have provided over 2.2 gigawatts of power to the area. Most of the company’s 2023 impairment losses — which totaled 26.8 billion Danish kroner, according to its full year results published Feb. 7 — related to the decision to shut down the Ocean 1 project, Orsted said. The wind developer was also impacted by a provision of 9.6 billion Daish kroner for cancellation fees related to the project.

While admitting 2023 was a year of “substantial challenges” for the company — with Orsted posting a net loss of 20.2 billion Danish kroner or approximately $3 billion USD for the full year — its  “traction and underlying momentum was strong in 2023,” Group President and CEO Mads Nipper said in a statement included in the Feb. 7 release. The company also detailed a new strategic business plan, walking back both its capacity and investment targets and revisiting its portfolio to “prioritise growth options with the highest potential for value creation” while reducing risk, Nipper said.

Westlie has served as Group CFO for several companies including Danish shipping company A.P. Moller-Maersk as well as telecommunications firms VEON and Telenor, according to his LinkedIn profile. He presently serves as chairman of the board for Norwegian industrial investment company Arendals Fossekompani, which focuses on “forward-looking technologies within the green energy transition,” Orsted said in the Tuesday release.

Harnett, meanwhile, joined Orsted in 2016 as a senior project director and became head of European execution programmes in November 2022, according to his LinkedIn page.

Orsted declined to comment beyond the details included in the press release.