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As Mara Zavagno steps up to lead People & Culture, the pattern behind Konecranes' leadership churn comes into focus: four top-team seats have changed since early 2025, and every one has been filled from inside.
Konecranes Plc announced on 29 July 2026 that it will promote Mara Zavagno to Executive Vice President, People & Culture, effective 1 October 2026. Zavagno joins the Leadership Team and reports to President and CEO Marko Tulokas. She succeeds Anneli Karkovirta, who retires after twelve years and leaves the Leadership Team on 1 August 2026.
On its own it looks routine: a retirement flagged back in February, a successor named on schedule. But this is the fourth change to Konecranes' top team in eighteen months, and every one has gone to someone already inside the company. That consistency is the part worth watching. It reassures investors weighing how stable the leadership is, and it carries just as much weight with employees. A steady run of internal promotions tells people their own careers can grow here, which is often what matters most when they think about their future with a company.
The signal: internal succession is now the default
Since the start of 2025, four of the Leadership Team's nine seats have turned over, and Konecranes has looked inside the house every time.
Marko Tulokas was elevated to CEO in June 2025 from within the leadership group, succeeding Anders Svensson. When Jussi Rautiainen took over Business Area Industrial Equipment on 1 January 2026, he stepped into the operational role Tulokas had vacated. When Minna Aila left as EVP Corporate Affairs & Brand at the end of 2025, Konecranes chose not to recruit a successor at all, redistributing her responsibilities internally. And now Karkovirta's successor is a twelve-year insider by way of the Terex MHPS acquisition.
Tulokas made the preference explicit in announcing Zavagno: "I am very pleased that we found such an excellent successor for our People & Culture leadership from within the company … and for growing such an excellent successor to take on her role."
For a company that has changed nearly half its top team in eighteen months, that consistency is the reassuring part. This is concentrated, sequenced turnover with continuity of institutional knowledge, not a revolving door, and not an outside-in reset of strategy. The other five Leadership Team seats have not moved at all, and at board level Pasi Laine and Ulf Liljedahl have chaired and vice-chaired across both the 2025 and 2026 AGMs, with only two of eight director seats turning over.
Why it matters now: a softer half-year to execute through
The continuity question is not just theoretical, because the new-look team has to deliver against a weaker top line. Net sales fell 5.3% in H1 2026 to EUR 1.93 billion, and comparable EBITA was down 9.3%. What cushions that is the order book, which grew to EUR 3.38 billion at end-June — up 16.1% year on year — on order intake that rose 6.9% in the half.
Guidance has been held unchanged across all three 2026 disclosures: net sales approximately at or above 2025 levels, and a comparable EBITA margin approximately at 2025 levels.
Financial snapshot
Metric | Q1 2026 (Jan–Mar) | H1 2026 (Jan–Jun) | FY 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
Net sales | EUR 907.9m (−7.7%) | EUR 1.93bn (−5.3%) | EUR 4.19bn (−0.9%) |
Order intake | EUR 1.07bn (+0.3%) | EUR 2.31bn (+6.9%) | EUR 4.39bn (+9.7%) |
Order book (period-end) | EUR 3.18bn (+7.9%) | EUR 3.38bn (+16.1%) | EUR 2.99bn (+3.5%) |
Comparable EBITA | EUR 105.7m, 11.6% margin (−3.1%) | EUR 235.2m, 12.2% margin (−9.3%) | EUR 588.1m, 14.0% margin (record) |
Operating profit | EUR 95.6m (−4.4%) | EUR 215.2m (−9.1%) | EUR 542.4m, 13.0% margin |
Basic EPS | EUR 0.28 (−8.6%) | EUR 0.66 (−9.3%) | EUR 5.05 |
Free cash flow | EUR 34.6m | EUR 14.4m | EUR 529.6m |
Net debt / gearing | EUR −184.9m (net cash) / −9.5% | EUR 22.3m / 1.1% | EUR −163.5m (net cash) / −7.8% |
A diversity-heavy release, a top team still taking shape
Konecranes leaned hard on the language of diversity in announcing Zavagno, and it is worth noticing because it is not something Finnish industrials say often. Tulokas credited her with having “systematically developed Konecranes’ diversity culture to meet the best industry standards.” Zavagno’s own statement returned to the theme more than once, calling inclusion, trust and “diversity of thought” essential drivers of innovation and growth. She is, after all, the company’s Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer, promoted onto the Leadership Team from the very portfolio she built.
Diversity, of course, is about far more than gender — nationality, background, discipline and ways of thinking all count, and by some of those measures the team does bring range. Zavagno herself is a case in point: she is Italian, holds a degree in Political Science and Economics from the University of Padova, and came to Konecranes through the 2017 Terex MHPS acquisition. Still, on the one dimension that is easiest to measure, the gender balance at the top, the release sits a little ahead of the numbers.
From 1 October the Leadership Team has nine members: six men and three women. No woman runs a business or holds one of the senior executive seats. The CEO, the CFO and deputy CEO, and all three business-area presidents are men, as is the technologies chief. The three women all hold corporate functions rather than businesses — Zavagno in People & Culture, Sirpa Poitsalo as General Counsel and Christine George in Corporate Strategy & Communications. The team is fairly narrow in age too, with members born between 1963 and 1978 and six of the nine born in the 1960s.
Zavagno’s arrival does little to shift that composition. She replaces another woman, the retiring Karkovirta, so the three-of-nine gender balance holds rather than improves, and the operational roles stay entirely male. The board is more balanced, with three women among its eight directors. On the evidence of its own leadership page, then, Konecranes is a company talking confidently about diversity while still building it — at least in its senior ranks — which is exactly why the promotion of a D&I leader to the top table is the detail worth drawing out.
Leadership team changes since early 2025
Announced | Change |
20 Jan 2025 | Anders Svensson announces departure as President & CEO; search for successor begins |
15 May 2025 | Marko Tulokas appointed President & CEO, effective 1 June 2025 |
5 Nov 2025 | Jussi Rautiainen appointed President, Business Area Industrial Equipment, effective 1 Jan 2026, joining the Leadership Team |
17 Dec 2025 | Minna Aila, EVP Corporate Affairs & Brand, leaves the Leadership Team effective 31 Dec 2025; no successor recruited, duties redistributed |
9 Feb 2026 | Karkovirta's summer 2026 retirement announced; successor search opened |
29 Jul 2026 | Mara Zavagno appointed EVP, People & Culture, effective 1 Oct 2026 |
Investor watchpoints
Three things will tell you whether the internal-continuity bet is paying off. First, order-book conversion: the EUR 3.38 billion backlog has to translate into a stronger H2 for the reaffirmed full-year guidance to hold. Second, integration: the H1 acquisitions — a majority stake in Mitsubishi Electric FA Industrial Products in Japan, plus service deals in Thailand, New Zealand and Spain — still have to show contribution, and integration is a People & Culture job as much as a commercial one. Third, whether the internal-succession preference extends the next time a seat opens, or proves specific to this cycle.
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