Elkem ASA has announced the appointment of Frederic Jacquin as SVP Strategy & Business Development and Asbjørn Søvik has been appointed as Elkem's SVP Green Ventures & Digital. Jacquin will continue to head the company's Silicones division until the replacement process has been concluded, expected by end of June 2022.

 

Frederic Jacquin will start in his role as Senior Vice President for Strategy & Business Development from 1 March 2022. In this role, he will be responsible for corporate strategy and business development, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and new growth projects supporting all of Elkem’s business divisions.

 

"Fred has served as Elkem’s head of the Silicones division since 2015, concluding with a year of record results in 2021 both for the company as a whole and for the division. This is a strong achievement. I am very pleased that Fred has accepted the opportunity to use his experience in the role of head of Elkem’s strategy and business development, and I look forward to continuing to have him as a member of the corporate management team. The process to nominate Fred's successor as head of the Silicones division is ongoing. Our aim is to further strengthen the presence of Elkem’s corporate and divisional leadership in Asia while continuing the existing dual strategy for the Silicones division of development and growth both in China and the rest of the world," says Elkem’s CEO, Helge Aasen.

 

Asbjørn Søvik has been appointed Senior Vice President for Green Ventures & Digital from 1 March 2022. In this new role, Asbjørn will assume responsibility for Elkem’s work within battery materials, biocarbon and digitalisation. This includes the responsibility for Vianode, the subsidiary and brand created by Elkem to pursue strategic growth opportunities for advanced battery materials.

 

"Asbjørn has served as Elkem’s head of Business Development since 2018. In this period, we have set out a clear strategy to grow and strengthen our competitive positions through operational excellence and increased specialization, with a special focus on continuous improvement within people and organisation, digitalisation and ESG. We have delivered strong progress, including the acquisitions of Basel Chemie and Polysil, further strengthening our position in specialised silicones segments in Asia. I am very pleased that Asbjørn has accepted the opportunity to use his experience as our head of Green Ventures & Digital, a new role set up to further accelerate Elkem's efforts in these important and high-potential areas, and I look forward  to continuing to have him as a member of the corporate management team," says Aasen.

 

Frederic Jacquin has been the Senior Vice President of Silicones at Elkem since 2015. He has previously worked for 11 years in Elkem Silicones International. He held the position as Vice President of Marketing and Sales before he was appointed head of Elkem Silicones in early 2015. Frederic Jacquin has a long experience with specialty chemicals and has thereby acquired a broad and international experience in specialty chemicals business development and industrial marketing. He holds an Executive MBA from the ESSEC French Business School and a Magistere in Marketing and Communication from La Sorbonne French University (Celsa).

 

Asbjørn Søvik has been the Senior Vice President of Business Development at Elkem since 2018. He has worked in the company since 1995 and was previously the SVP for the Carbon division from 2007 to 2018. Søvik has an extensive international management experience from plants and divisions in the United States, Brazil and Norway. He has a broad experience from most of Elkem’s different functions, such as Raw Materials, Marketing & Sales, Energy, Operations and M&A. He holds a MSc (Siving.) in Engineering from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and an MBA from IESE in Spain.