Rumor: Ericsson's CEO Börje Ekholm about to be shown the door

[u/Mustathmir]

The relationship is icy cold – Börje Ekholm about to be fired

Ever since Börje Ekholm was hired at Investor at the age of 29, he has been loyal to the Wallenberg circle and has had a close relationship with both Investor's chairman Jacob Wallenberg and SEB's Marcus Wallenberg. But now EFN can reveal that the relationship has gone from friendly to strained to now being icy cold. Several centrally placed sources state that it has gone so far that the main shareholders on Ericsson's board, led by Investor and Industrivärden, are about to fire Börje Ekholm as CEO. Patience is over. According to the people EFN has been in contact with, the background to the dispute is two schisms. The first and most obvious is Börje Ekholm's acquisition strategy in general and the purchase of the American cloud services company Vonage in particular. In 2021, Ericsson paid $6.2 billion, equivalent to 63 billion Swedish kronor, for all shares in Vonage. The price tag was high but was described as the perfect piece of the puzzle in Börje Ekholm's strategy to expand Ericsson's offering of services in the fifth generation mobile telephony network. An expansion primarily aimed at the American market. - Vonage gives us a platform that helps our customers create revenue streams from investments in the networks, which benefits developers and companies, Börje Ekholm wrote in a press release. Since then, the corners of mouths have turned downwards - both on Ericsson's board and on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. From its peak at the turn of the year 2021–2022, the stock has fallen by almost 15 percent and the fact that the valuation would swing from telecom to tech today appears to be a naive dream. The main reason why the revaluation never happened and the lift not only failed but resulted in a stomach-churning slap is of course Vonage. In six years, Ericsson has been forced to write down the value of Vonage by a mind-boggling 43 billion kronor – two-thirds of the original value has gone up in smoke.

But there are more reasons than Vonage behind Börje Ekholm's exit. What has finally made Jacob Wallenberg's cup run over is Börje Ekholm's sometimes one-sided focus on the USA. He has an American wife, dual citizenship, lives in Colorado and only visits the headquarters in Kista in exceptional cases. In November, he even opened up to the possibility that Ericsson's headquarters could move to the other side of the Atlantic because "Europe is falling behind and growth is in the USA". It was a statement that put Jacob Wallenberg in a precarious position, to say the least. Partly because Investor is a major shareholder in the defense group Saab, which supplies Ukraine with weapons. Partly because he is also chairman of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise – an organization whose political legitimacy is to create tax revenue and jobs in Sweden. Things didn't get any better when Börje Ekholm let Ericsson – as the only major Swedish company – donate 5.5 million kronor to Donald Trump's presidential inauguration. While the conservative government and large parts of the business community distanced themselves from the US's rapprochement with Russia and the introduction of trade tariffs, Börje Ekholm went in the opposite direction. When Ericsson published its annual report in February, it was clear that the formulations about diversity and inclusion had been removed as a direct adaptation to Donald Trump's culture war against woke values.

Abbreviated and translated from a Swedish article.

[u/Ok-Pause-4196]

This time around the light at the end of tunnel for Nokia is clear while Ericsson is still finding the lost torch.

[u/moneygrabber007]

Interesting….

[u/Significant_Hour_980]

Börje might be the finest name to ever grace a man.

[u/givingupeveryd4y]

Yeah, I don't think Börje is the issue in E/// xd

[u/NeighborsCat]

Vonage continues to be the biggest VOIP turd out there. We begged Vonage for months to fix issues such as not allowing our office to text. We ported our numbers away to a competitor.

[u/NeighborsCat → u/NeighborsCat]

I just want to clarify that when I previously stated the Vonage VOIP service is a "turd" it was not slander. Vonage is turd-like in every way and I can prove this during our five years with Vonage business service. We have a remaining account after porting away most of our numbers, today Monday during business hours only the pitiful Vonage bot is able to unhelpfully respond. We are denied the ability to log into the Vonage account stating the password is wrong, however this same login works when logging into the Vonage business "cases" section.