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 McLoughlin will hand over on Feb. 1 to Samuelson, head of
Electrolux's Major Appliances Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA)
division. Samuelson, 47, was previously chief financial officer of
the firm, which he joined in 2008.
The change comes just a month after General Electric walked away
from a $3.3 billion agreement to sell its appliances business to
Electrolux in the face of opposition from U.S. antitrust regulators,
forcing Electrolux to pay a $175 million termination fee.
The failure of the deal, which would have seen Electrolux leapfrog
Whirlpool as the world's biggest appliances maker, raised questions
about its future strategy.
In recent years, Electrolux has increased its focus on profitable
segments like cooking, and boosted productivity through
modularization, or using more components common to a range of
products.
"We will not change our basic strategy," Samuelson told a conference
call. "We will continue to improve cost, quality and flexibility,
through for example modularization of our product designs and
through smart automation of our manufacturing processes."
The 59-year old McLoughlin, an American who took the helm at
Electrolux five years ago, said in a statement he would return to
his family.
With McLoughlin's family having returned to the United States
several years ago, it was widely expected he could soon leave, even
before the GE deal broke down. Samuelson had been the main internal
candidate to replace him.
However, McLoughlin said immediately after the General Electric deal
collapsed last month he remained committed to Electrolux and would
continue as CEO.
The EMEA unit's profitability has improved under Samuelson's
leadership, despite a tough market and intense price pressure. In
the third quarter of 2015, it reached an operating margin of 6.3
percent, the highest since 2010.
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Electrolux has shifted much of its production to low-cost countries
over the past decade.
John Hernander, lead portfolio manager for Swedish equities at
Nordea Asset Management, which had a 4 percent stake in the company
as of Sept. 30, welcomed the choice of Samuelson as new CEO.
"In our opinion, Jonas has done a good job in turning around
profitability of the European business, despite tough underlying
market conditions," Hernander said, adding he did not expect major
changes to the firm's strategy.
The share reaction in Electrolux was muted on Monday with shares
down 0.8 percent at 1132 GMT, compared with a 0.1 percent gain in
Stockholm's OMXS30 blue-chip index.
(Reporting by Johannes Hellstrom and Sven Nordenstam; editing by
Adrian Croft)
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