Zurich, Switzerland – Pekka Tiitinen, the global head of ABB’s Drives and Controls business, has been appointed to ABB’s Executive Committee as head of the Discrete Automation and Motion (DM) division as of Sept. 15, 2013. He succeeds Ulrich Spiesshofer, who is taking over as ABB CEO.
Tiitinen (46), a Finnish citizen, has been responsible for ABB’s Drives and Controls business since it was formed in January 2013. Before that he was head of the global Low Voltage Drives business for 10 years, with a very successful track record particularly in China, the US and Europe. During this period he grew the drives business organically, led important technological innovations and improved profitability sustainably. The Drives and Controls business unit is the world’s largest industrial drives business, with more than 6,000 employees in 80 countries. From 2006 to 2010, he was also a regional division manager in ABB’s Northern Europe region, which comprises 20 countries from Ireland in the west to Russia in the east.
“Pekka has very successfully expanded the global drives business over the past decade, mostly through strong market orientation, excellent technology development and organic growth, and has sustainably strengthened its profitability at the same time. Pekka was also key in realizing the value of the Baldor acquisition, ABB’s largest to date,” said Spiesshofer. “He has been instrumental in developing and implementing the DM division’s strategy, and we are pleased to have such a successful team leader with a strong track record in this role.”
Tiitinen joined ABB as a design engineer in the drives business in 1990 and has held several management roles in the business since 1993. Before joining ABB, Tiitinen worked for Cimcorp Inc. in the robotics industry in the US and in Finland. He has a degree in electrical engineering, specializing in drives and robot automation, from the University of Technology in Helsinki, Finland. In his new role, he will be based in Zurich, Switzerland.
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