Change—the only thing that’s permanent
A lot has happened over the past year, and the newsflow in the final quarter exceeded most of its predecessors. In 12 years, Coor has grown and evolved into becoming the leading provider of integrated service solutions. And our journey is far from over.
Every time I look back over the past year, I’m astonished about how much has happened. Take 2012 as an example: we started up several new partnerships, notably with the Danish Police Service and Unibail-Rodamco in Sweden. We’ve extended key contracts with ICA, Logica and SAS. We’ve developed and launched our new Food & Drink concept. In 2012, our sales will be about SEK 7 billion, and we now have over 5,500 employees. I also hope we can complete our acquisition of Addici before year-end, bringing another 1,300 skilled people, over SEK 1 billion of sales and several new accounts.
We also executed some changes to our management. In early-2013, we’ll gain a new CEO, Mikael Stöhr. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him at few times and I’m convinced he’s the right man to take our business forward. I’m really looking forward to working with him, even if it will be in a different role to what I have now. After 12 exciting years heading up our Swedish business, I think it’s time to step aside and hand over to someone new. My successor is Ulf Wretskog, who I think many of you have already met. He’s worked for a long time in various management positions at Coor, mainly in the Swedish and Finnish businesses. You’ll find an introduction to Ulf in this issue of Nova.
Sure, there are things we could do better, but there is a strong and genuine ambition to always improve and develop our business and delivery.
Accordingly, this is the last leader of Nova that I’ll be writing. I’d like to finish off my time as its author by highlighting what I think makes Coor stand out most again—willingness to change, flexibility and development. Sure, there are things we could do better, but there is a strong and genuine ambition to always improve and develop our business and delivery. And this is a big success factor. The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different, and those players that welcome change will be able to adapt more easily in changeable surroundings.
With that, I’d like to offer my thanks, wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Staffan Ebenfelt
Stockholm, Sweden, December 2012.
