Christian Wilhelm Rynning-Tønnesen (born 18 June 1959) is a Norwegian businessperson. He has spent most of his career in

Statkraft Statkraft AS is a hydropower Hydropower (from Ancient Greek -, "water"), also known as water power or water energy, is the use of falling or fast-running water to Electricity generation, produce electricity or to power machines. This is ac ...

, first holding various positions from 1992 to 2005, and then as

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

since 2010. He was CEO of

Norske Skog Norske Skog ASA, formerly Norske Skogindustrier ASA, which translates as ''Norwegian Forest Industries'', is a Norwegian pulp and paper company established in 1962. The company has long been one of the world's leading manufacturers of newsprint ...

from 2006 to 2010.

Career

Rynning-Tønnesen was born in

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

, and grew up in

Kristiansand Kristiansand is a city and Municipalities of Norway, municipality in Agder county, Norway. The city is the fifth-largest and the municipality is the sixth-largest in Norway, with a population of around 116,000 as of January 2020, following th ...

and

Bergen Bergen (, ) is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Vestland county on the Western Norway, west coast of Norway. Bergen is the list of towns and cities in Norway, second-largest city in Norway after the capital Oslo. By May 20 ...

. His father Carl M. Rynning-Tønnesen and grandfather were both prominent chiefs of police in Kristiansand, but Rynning-Tønnesen is educated as a

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

at the

Norwegian Institute of Technology The Norwegian Institute of Technology ( Norwegian: ''Norges tekniske høgskole'', NTH) was a science institute in Trondheim, Norway. It was established in 1910, and existed as an independent technical university for 58 years, after which it was ...

. He started his professional career as a researcher at

SINTEF SINTEF (, "The Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research"), headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, is an independent research organization founded in 1950 that conducts contract research and development projects. SINTEF has 2000 employees fr ...

, worked with product development in the company Esso Norway from 1985 to 1989, and then as a consultant at

McKinsey & Company McKinsey & Company (informally McKinsey or McK) is an American multinational strategy and management consulting firm that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. Founded in 1926 by James O. McKinse ...

from 1989 to 1992. In 1992 he was hired in

. He held various positions in the leadership, the common denominator being a relation to strategy, the market and finance. He became acting chief executive officer in 2003, and was vice president of finance in 2005. On 1 April 2005 he was appointed as chief financial officer in the company

industrier. Among others, he worked with the much-discussed discontinuation of the paper mill

Norske Skog Union Norske Skog Union was a paper mill located in Skien in Norway. The mill was part of the Norske Skog Corporation and opened in 1873 with the name Union Co. The mill had two paper machines that produced 240,000 tonnes of newsprint and book paper. ...

. On 20 February 2006 it was announced that Rynning-Tønnesen had been hired as CEO of the Statkraft-owned, Kristiansand-based

power company The Power Company is a team of superheroes-for-hire in the DC Comics universe. The team, created by Kurt Busiek and Tom Grummett, first appeared in '' JLA'' #61 (February 2002). They subsequently starred in an eponymous series that ran for eigh ...

Agder Energi Agder is a county () and traditional region in the southern part of Norway and is coextensive with the Southern Norway region. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Aust-Agder counties were merged. Since the ...

. He was headhunted, and did not apply for the job. Chair of Agder Energi

Sigmund Kroslid Sigmund Kroslid (born 11 October 1947) is a Norwegian politician for the Christian Democratic Party, best known for being the mayor of Flekkefjord for fourteen years. Career He was born in Flekkefjord as a son of David Kroslid and Mathilde Heskes ...

, who had taken the position in December 2005, praised Rynning-Tønnesen as "the clear primary candidate of the board". ''

Stavanger Aftenblad (; ) or simply ''Aftenbladet'' is a daily newspaper based in Stavanger, Norway, and owned by Schibsted Media Group. Norwegian owners held 42 percent of the shares in Schibsted at the end of 2015. is thus majority foreign-owned. History and ...

'' noted that the new CEO did not want to negotiate a golden parachute. It was unclear when Rynning-Tønnesen would actually assume the position, but in early June he visited Agder Energi for preparations. However, the next week he declined the position to become CEO of Norske Skog. He had been offered the position in Norske Skog behind the scenes. Jan Oksum, who in February 2006 "regretted" that Rynning-Tønnesen left Norske Skog, was fired due to poor results. The poor results continued under Rynning-Tønnesen, due to downward international trends and sinking

demand In economics, demand is the quantity of a goods, good that consumers are willing and able to purchase at various prices during a given time. In economics "demand" for a commodity is not the same thing as "desire" for it. It refers to both the desi ...

of paper. From February to November 2007 the

Oslo Stock Exchange Oslo Stock Exchange () (OSE: OSLO) is a stock exchange within the Nordic countries and offers Norway's only regulated markets for securities trading today. The stock exchange offers a full product range including equities, derivatives and fixed ...

value of Norske Skog plummeted with 20%. In 2008 the activity at Norske Skog Follum was lowered amid continued losses. Nonetheless, in 2008 he received an award for leadership, the "European CEO of the Year for the pulp and paper industry", from the information company RISI. Rynning-Tønnesen assumed the office as CEO of Statkraft in the summer of 2010, and kept his annual salary of . This was 0.4 million more than the person he succeeded as CEO of Statkraft,

Bård Mikkelsen Bård Martin Mikkelsen (born 31 May 1948) is a Norwegian businessperson. He has been the chief executive officer of Widerøe (1988–1997), the Ulstein Group (1997–1999), Oslo Energi Holding (1999–2001) and Statkraft (2001–2010). Biograph ...

, earned. It was the highest salary for a leader in a state-owned company in Norway. In 2019, Rynning-Tønnesen received the Excellence in Sustainability Award from the Centre for Responsible Leadership.

Personal life

Rynning-Tønnesen lives at Jar in

Bærum Bærum () is a list of municipalities of Norway, municipality in the Greater Oslo Region in Akershus County, Norway. It forms an affluent suburb of Oslo on the west coast of the city. Bærum is Norway's fifth largest municipality with a populatio ...

, near Ringstabekk. He has a wife and four children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rynning-Toennesen, Christian 1959 births Living people Norwegian businesspeople Norwegian Institute of Technology alumni Norske Skog people Statkraft people People from Kristiansand People from Bærum