Cevian Capital

Foundation and founders The company was founded in 1996 by Christer Gardell and Lars Förberg. Christer Gardell is co-founder and managing partner. Born in 1960, he graduated in business from the Stockholm School of Economics in 1984. After working as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, he was CEO of AB Custos from 1996 to 2001. Also holding the title co-founder and managing partner is Lars Förberg, who also graduated from the Stockholm School of Economics. He worked with Gardell at AB Custos from 1997 to 2001 as Chief Investment Officer. Förberg is based in Zürich. Investment activity On 16 December 2018 ABB relented to pressure from Cevian and agreed to sell its poorly-performing Power Grids unit. In December 2017 Cevian sold its entire shares (8.2%) in AB Volvo to the Chinese Volvo Cars owner Geely. Cevian thus achieved a profit of more than two billion euros. == Investment method ==

The firm invests only in Europe, although 70% of its capital comes from North America. It does not short stocks, use leverage, write open letters, or engage in proxy fights, and it believes in long-term investments. At first its investments were confined to Scandinavia; more recently, according to Zimmerman, the firm's investment focus has been "on the Nordics, UK, Germany and Switzerland," because these countries "have a combination of the clearest governance rules in favor of shareholders, good transparency as well as interesting companies." Cevian has not invested in southern or Central Europe, Zimmerman has said, "because we don't know those environments, and we don't have relationships there, and we can't be certain that the rules, formal and informal rules, are ones that we'll be comfortable with." Gardell has also stated that he and his colleagues need "to know the people, have networks, have a corporate governance tradition we're comfortable with" in order to make an investment. ==References==