Ilkka Herlin News

Finnish engineering firm Konecranes and cargo handling machinery maker Cargotec plan to merge to help speed up innovation and reap savings, they said on Thursday, sending both of their shares sharply higher.The boards of the companies, which provide road and sea-cargo handling machinery and services to industries, factories, ports and terminals, said they had signed a plan under which Konecranes would be folded into Cargotec in a merger of equals.Cargotec shares jumped around 25%, while Konecranes stock was up around 17%, giving a combined market value of around 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion

Cargotec's Board of Directors has in its meeting on 27 January, 2013 appointed Mr. Mika Vehviläinen (M.Sc. (Econ.), b. 1961, as Cargotec's new President and CEO. Vehviläinen will start at Cargotec on 1 March 2013. Tapio Hakakari, Cargotec's Vice Chairman of the Board, will continue as the interim President and CEO until 28 February 2013. Mika Vehviläinen is currently the President and CEO of Finnair Plc. Previously he has held senior leadership positions at Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia, and has worked in logistics and service development duties in the United States and in Asia.

Cargotec has signed an agreement of strategic cooperation with Rosmorport that coordinates Russian marine transport infrastructure development. The cooperation with Rosmorport improves Cargotec's possibilities for a high level dialogue about Russian marine transport infrastructure development and enables involvement in the information flow for regulation in Eurasian ports. "Rosmorport cooperation is a high-level leverage for participating in ports' infrastructure development. This cooperation will also increase our opportunities to present our know-how in Russia," says Mikael Mäkinen, Cargotec's President and CEO. "We are delighted to start this strategic cooperation with a leading and global company like Cargotec that has decades of firsthand knowledge of marine transport solutions.