A celebrated business leader says goodbye when Jørgen Mads Clausen resigns as chairman of the board of Danfoss on 25 March.
In an interview with Avisen Danmark’s business editor, he talks about the biggest victories, difficult decisions, and how he has globalized the company by, amongst other things, establishing a large turnover in China.
73-year-old Jørgen Mads Clausen resigns as Chairman of the Board of the Danfoss Group after 13 years. Before that, he was CEO for almost as long, and in total, he has worked for Danfoss for over 40 years.
When he took over the management of Danfoss, it was already an international company. But all the factories were in Denmark – except one in Flensburg which is not there anymore.
“I have globalized Danfoss. We have established production all over the world and today have 100 factories. At that time, we also had no turnover in China. We now have a turnover of almost DKK 10 billion in China and have over 5,000 employees out there. They have big problems with air pollution, they fire with coal and are not used to saving energy,” Jørgen Mads Clausen says and talks about the Chinese government’s five-year plans, where the climate suddenly is high on the agenda.
“We have laid out our strategy for China so that it completely matches the five-year plan,” he says.
When asked if Russia’s attack on Ukraine gives any thought to what might happen if Western companies suddenly have to similarly consider their activities in China, Jørgen Mads Clausen says, “I can say 100 percent no to that. China has a completely different attitude and does not attack any countries.”
Jørgen Mads Clausen however does not want to speculate right now whether a conflict could arise if China attacks Taiwan and the world community would condemn China as they are Russia currently. Instead he goes on to talk about how Danfoss under his management has grown from 5,000 to 40,000 employees.
An important trick has been to avoid the trap that other engineering companies fall into spreading over many different products and losing focus on the areas where one is actually most skilled.
Read the full interview with Jørgen Mads Clausen here
