Mikael Hed stepping down as Rovio CEO in 2015


    New changes over at Rovio. Mikael Hed, Rovio’s CEO for the last five years and son of Kai Hed, Rovio’s controlling shareholder, is stepping down as CEO and will be replaced by Pekka Rantala. Reasons as to why the change in leadership was not mentioned in the press release.

    Rantala served as the Commercial Officer at Rovio for the past three months. Prior to that he was the food products industry as CEO of Hartwall and a managing director of Fazer Brands. As many others, Rantala started his career at Nokia, rising in the ranks from Export Manager all the way to SVP of Marketing.

    Rantala and Hed will work together for the next few months before officially Rantala officially gets behind the wheel starting January 2015.

    Hed isn’t staying too far away from the company, however, he has also been appointed as Chairman of Rovio Animation Studios, where he will oversee Animation and Movies.

    “It has been an amazing ride and in the coming months I will be very happy to pass the hoodie to Pekka Rantala, who will take Rovio to the next level,” Mikael Hed said in a statement. “Pekka is known to be a great leader with experience building successful global consumer brands. I will continue to play an active role and will support Pekka in any way I can to ensure Rovio’s continued success.”

    The financial results for Rovio in 2013 were by some standards on the disappointing side with EUR 156 million in revenue and 26.9 EUR million in net income, which stalled from the previous years.

    It remains to be seen whether this, along with other changes in the company, such as Peter Vesterbacka’s title, is is a planned transition or a response to recent underperformance.

    Pekka Rantala was brought into the company exactly at the same time as Peter Vesterbacka’s title was changed and given to Blanca Juti.