Helge Lund named BP’s chairman

The UK-based energy giant BP named Helge Lund as the successor to Carl-Henric Svanberg as chairman of the company.

Lund will join the BP board as chairman-designate and a non-executive director on September 1, 2018. He will be appointed chairman on January 1, 2019, BP said in a statement.

Lund, who is also chairman of Novo Nordisk in Denmark, will stand down with immediate effect from his directorship at Schlumberger.

Helge Lund served as chief executive of BG Group from 2015 to 2016 when the company merged with Shell. He joined BG Group from Statoil where he served as president & CEO for 10 years from 2004.

Prior to Statoil, he was president & CEO of Aker Kvaerner, an industrial conglomerate with operations in oil and gas, engineering and construction, pulp and paper and shipbuilding. He has also held executive positions in Aker RGI, a Norwegian industrial holding company, and Hafslund Nycomed, an industrial group with business activities in pharmaceuticals and energy.

He has worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and has served as a political advisor for the parliamentary group of the Conservative party in Norway.

He is an operating advisor to Clayton Dubilier & Rice, the US investment firm, a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group and served as a member on the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Group on Sustainable Energy in the period 2011-14.