Hilde Merete Aasheim

Hilde Merete Aasheim
Born	Larvik, Norway
Nationality	Norwegian
Education	Norwegian School of Economics (siviløkonom); state-authorised public accountant
Occupation	Business executive
Company	Norsk Hydro
Title	President and CEO of Norsk Hydro (2019 to 2024)
Spouse	Tom Erling Mikkelsen
Children	2

Hilde Merete Aasheim (born 1958) is a Norwegian business executive who was President and Chief Executive Officer of the aluminium and renewable energy company Norsk Hydro from May 8, 2019, to May 13, 2024. She was the first woman to lead Hydro in its history, succeeding Svein Richard Brandtzæg, and was succeeded by Eivind Kallevik.

A trained economist and state-authorised public accountant, Aasheim began her career as an auditor at Arthur Andersen and spent almost two decades at the Norwegian metals group Elkem, rising to head its silicon division. Aasheim joined Norsk Hydro in 2005 as head of leadership and culture, led the integration of its oil and gas business with Statoil in 2006 and 2007, and returned in November 2008 to run the primary aluminium business, a post she held for more than a decade.

Her appointment as chief executive was announced on March 18, 2019, a day before the company was hit by a ransomware attack that forced much of it into manual operation. As CEO Aasheim set an agenda of "lifting profitability, driving sustainability", sold the Rolled Products business area to KPS Capital Partners for EUR 1.38 billion in 2021, sold a 30 percent stake in the Alunorte alumina refinery to Glencore in 2023, and set up new businesses in renewable power, green hydrogen and batteries. The company reported record results in 2021 and 2022 during Aasheim's tenure.

Outside the company, Aasheim chaired the Federation of Norwegian Industries (Norsk Industri) and the International Aluminium Institute, and sat on the boards of Yara and Veidekke. Since leaving Norsk Hydro, Aasheim has joined the boards of the Finnish stainless steel maker Outokumpu, the British testing and inspection company Intertek and the Norwegian energy technology company ECOnnect Energy. As of October 2026 she remains a member of the Outokumpu board, to which she was re-elected at the company's 2026 annual general meeting.

Early life and education

Aasheim was born in 1958. The company's own biographies and press releases give Aasheim's birthplace as Larvik, in Vestfold, Norway; Store norske leksikon gives it as Tønsberg. In a 2019 interview with Teknisk Ukeblad, she said the Larvik dialect still came through when she got excited.

Her father, S. Magnus Aasheim, was a language teacher and a member of the Norwegian resistance during the Second World War. According to the same interview, he escaped through a window when German forces came to his door near the end of the war in 1945, and afterwards refused to accept a medal for his resistance work. Aasheim described him as a man who never liked to put himself forward and who cared about equality between the sexes, to the point of insisting that his wife's name, not his own, be listed in the telephone directory. "I am probably quite like my father," she said. Her mother was still living in 2019, in her 99th year.

Aasheim studied at the Norwegian School of Economics (Norges Handelshøyskole, NHH) in Bergen, where she was a student around 1980 and chose auditing as her main subject. She graduated with the Norwegian siviløkonom degree, which Hydro renders in English as a master's degree in business economics, and also qualified as a state-authorised public accountant (statsautorisert revisor). Asked in 2019 whether she had ever considered training for anything other than auditing, she said she had not, because she liked numbers, and argued that modern auditing was more about understanding risk and governance than ticking off vouchers.

Career

Arthur Andersen and Elkem (1982 to 2005)

Aasheim began her working life as a financial auditor at Arthur Andersen & Co., where she worked from 1982 to 1986. She joined the Norwegian metals and materials company Elkem in 1986 and stayed for 19 years, holding a series of finance and management roles. According to her Outokumpu board biography, she was financial manager in corporate accounting from 1986 to 1988, head of finance in the ferroalloy division from 1988 to 1990, and head of human resources and health, safety and environment, with a seat on Elkem's corporate management board, from 1990 to 1998.

From 1998 to 2002 she was financial director of Elkem Aluminium, a 50/50 joint venture between Elkem and Alcoa. In 2002 she became executive vice president in charge of Elkem's silicon metal division and rejoined the corporate management. Aasheim later said that auditing work at Elkem had first opened her eyes to the importance of engineers. She travelled to the company's plants in Sauda, Bremanger and Salten and was fascinated by the workers who ran the furnaces and alloying processes, and by the local communities that had grown up around hydropower and natural resources.

Hydro and StatoilHydro (2005 to 2008)

In October 2005 Aasheim was recruited to Norsk Hydro by then chief executive Eivind Reiten as executive vice president for Leadership and Culture, a portfolio that covered human resources, health, safety and environment, and corporate social responsibility. She was a member of Hydro's corporate management board in that role.

On December 18, 2006, Hydro agreed to merge its oil and gas division with Statoil. In January 2007 Aasheim stepped out of Hydro's corporate management to lead planning for the integration of the two businesses. She later described the task as bringing 15 different trade unions to the same table and making two former competitors work together. "We were to unite the best of two cultures," she said, adding that it was not for her to judge whether they had succeeded.

When the merger was completed on October 1, 2007, Aasheim joined the corporate management of the new company, StatoilHydro, as executive vice president for Corporate Staffs and Services, with responsibility for human resources, health, safety and environment, corporate social responsibility and global business services.

Head of primary aluminium (2008 to 2019)

On August 14, 2008, the company announced that Aasheim, then 49, would return to the company as executive vice president for the Aluminium Metal business area, replacing Torstein Dale Sjøtveit on the corporate management board and reporting directly to Reiten. She took up the post on November 1, 2008. According to Teknisk Ukeblad, Reiten made her the offer for a second time, and she accepted even though the company had already been hit hard by the financial crisis.

Her first months in the job were spent cutting production. "The aluminium price was extremely low, the dollar exchange rate was 5.50, and only three weeks after I started the job I stood at Karmøy and explained why we had to shut down the oldest electrolysis plant," she recalled in 2019. Hydro took down 25 percent of its electrolysis capacity in the group, with closures at Karmøy, Husnes and Sunndal in Norway and at plants in Germany and Slovakia. Aasheim said the closures happened without drama: "I took the whole organisation with me. I learned that people will go along with cost cuts and restructuring if they understand the reason."

After Hydro reorganised its business areas in March 2009, the title changed to executive vice president for Primary Metal, a role she held from 2009 to 2012; from 2012 to 2019 her area was Primary Metal and Metal Markets. She was one of the closest colleagues of Svein Richard Brandtzæg, who became chief executive in March 2009. During these years she was also vice chair of the board of Qatalum, Hydro's primary aluminium joint venture in Qatar, from 2008 to 2019.

President and CEO of Hydro (2019 to 2024)

Appointment and the 2019 cyberattack

On March 18, 2019, Hydro announced that Aasheim would succeed Brandtzæg as President and CEO with effect from May 8, 2019. Board chair Dag Mejdell said she had "a unique combination of broad industrial experience, commercial instinct and strong leadership skills". Aasheim said she looked forward to leading Hydro "together with 35,000 competent and engaged colleagues around the world" and that she was confident the company could "turn a current challenging situation, for Hydro and for the global aluminium industry, into opportunities". Norway's culture and gender equality minister, Trine Skei Grande, welcomed the appointment of the company's first female chief executive on social media with "Hurra!".

In the early hours of the next day, March 19, 2019, Hydro was hit by an extensive cyberattack that affected IT systems in most business areas and forced the company to switch to manual operations wherever possible. Aasheim, who was still running the primary metal business, told Teknisk Ukeblad that she had gone to bed late after reading the press coverage of her appointment and was woken at 4 a.m. at her home in Voksenlia by a colleague telling her the company was under a serious cyberattack "and this is not a drill". By 5 a.m. she was at the head office at Vækerø setting up a crisis centre.

"Everything was dark here. All PCs and all network and servers were down. We only had pen and paper, so we started writing posters for employees saying no one should switch on their PCs when they arrived at work," she said. Smelters had to be run by hand with molten metal at close to 1,000 degrees in the electrolysis cells, and retired staff were called in by mobile phone. "Fortunately we have employees who remember how to handle production manually. They became our heroes," Aasheim said. She dismissed the idea that the timing of the attack was connected with her appointment. By April 12, 2019, most production was back at or near normal levels, but the attack had delayed billing and reporting systems and Hydro postponed its first-quarter report.

New agenda: "lifting profitability, driving sustainability"

Aasheim took office on May 8, 2019. On her first day she announced a renewal of the corporate management board, a restructuring and strategic review of the Rolled Products business area, stricter capital discipline and capital allocation, and a revitalised improvement programme. She named Eivind Kallevik, until then chief financial officer, to succeed her as head of Primary Metal, appointed Pål Kildemo as CFO and replaced the head of Rolled Products with Einar Glomnes. "We must acknowledge the challenges that must be addressed to strengthen our performance and cash generation," she said, adding that the Alunorte alumina refinery in Brazil had to be returned to full production as soon as possible. She later told Teknisk Ukeblad that she "had decided to set the agenda from day one" and give the company a new direction.

In September 2019 Hydro announced a restructuring of its rolling business, including the planned closure of parts of foil production at Grevenbroich in Germany, with up to 735 full-time positions to be cut and total restructuring costs of around EUR 160 million. At its 2019 investor day, the company launched a NOK 7.3 billion improvement programme to be delivered by 2023 and a target of a 10 percent return on capital over the cycle. Teknisk Ukeblad reported in November 2019 that the measures meant around 2,200 fewer jobs out of roughly 35,000; Aasheim said profitability "has been too poor both in Brazil and in the company otherwise", citing trade restrictions, Brexit and competition from China.

In August 2019, three months into Aasheim's tenure, the company launched two lower-carbon aluminium brands, Hydro REDUXA and Hydro CIRCAL, the latter made with at least 75 percent post-consumer scrap. In her 2019 letter to shareholders Aasheim wrote: "In my view we cannot achieve profitability in the long run without operating and producing in a sustainable way. I see it as an ethical responsibility, but also as a business opportunity, to make the carbon footprint of our products a competitive edge." The company also adopted a "30 by 2030" climate strategy to cut gross CO2 emissions by 30 percent across its value chain.

Brazil and Alunorte

When Aasheim took over, the Alunorte refinery in Pará state had been running at half capacity for more than a year under embargoes imposed by Brazilian courts after heavy rainfall in February 2018 led to accusations that the plant had released untreated water. On May 20, 2019, the federal court in Belém lifted the remaining production embargo. Aasheim described the decision as "an important step towards normal production at our strategically important operations in Pará". On September 26, 2019, the court lifted the final embargo on the new DRS2 bauxite residue deposit, ending a 19-month restriction on the plant.

Strategy to 2025 and the pandemic

In December 2020 Aasheim presented a strategy to 2025 built on two pillars: strengthening its position in low-carbon aluminium, and growing in recycling and new energy. The improvement target was extended to NOK 8.5 billion by 2025, and the company created a Renewable Growth unit and a battery unit within Hydro Energy. "We will grow in areas where our capabilities match the megatrends, first and foremost in recycling, renewable energy and batteries," Aasheim said. During the COVID-19 pandemic the company cut 2020 capital expenditure to NOK 7 billion and delayed its 2019 dividend until conditions stabilised, to protect its investment-grade credit rating. Aasheim reported that Hydro had achieved NOK 4.2 billion in savings in 2020, about half of the overall 2025 ambition.

Under Aasheim the renewable energy unit was renamed Hydro Rein and set up as a separate company in April 2021, and the group's green hydrogen company was named Hydro Havrand in October 2021.

Strategy to 2030 and departure

At the Capital Markets Day in November 2023 Aasheim set out a strategy to 2030 of "pioneering the green aluminium transition, powered by renewable energy", with higher growth targets in extrusions, recycling and renewable power. "Based on our leading position we are now shifting gear," Aasheim said.

On March 14, 2024, the company announced that Aasheim had decided to step down after five years as CEO and that Kallevik would succeed her on May 13, 2024. Aasheim left the company at the end of June 2024 after 17 years there. Mejdell said she had "demonstrated a strong ability to manage short-term challenges, while positioning the company for long-term opportunities" and that during her tenure "Hydro has strengthened profitability and significantly lifted the sustainability agenda". Communications director Halvor Molland told E24 that Aasheim had been planning her departure since the autumn of 2023.

Leadership and management style

Aasheim has described close cooperation with employees as the foundation of her leadership. Recalling the 2008 and 2009 smelter closures, she said: "I learned that people will go along with cost cuts and restructuring if they understand the reason. A close and good cooperation with the employees is the whole foundation of my leadership." In the same interview she said she cared little that an analyst had written after her appointment that she was "not very charismatic", saying that this was the kind of thing one had to accept at the top of a large company.

She was openly self-critical about Hydro's handling of Brazil. "We had done too little for the local community around the plants, and had no friends who would stand up for us when the accusations about overflow from the deposits came," she said in 2019. "We were too late in Brazil, but got a powerful reminder that sustainability is business." She said she had become personally involved in social programmes for residents around the Alunorte plant, including housing and education intended to help Hydro recruit electricians and operators locally.

Safety was a recurring theme in her public statements as chief executive. At the 2022 Capital Markets Day she said that "health, safety and the wellbeing of people is on the top of Hydro's strategic priorities". When she stepped down, Svein Tore Holsether, chief executive of Yara, told NRK that she was "skilled, committed, hands-on, puts safety first" and that her "clear voice" on the decarbonisation of industry and the need for more renewable power had been important. Anders Opedal, chief executive of Equinor, said she had been an important force in Norwegian industry's work on energy and industrial policy.

She was also willing to criticise the Norwegian government in public. When the government proposed further cuts to the CO2 compensation scheme for energy-intensive industry in its October 2023 budget, a change Hydro estimated would cost it about NOK 1 billion in 2023, Aasheim said: "We are surprised and disappointed the government has once again chosen to weaken the competitiveness of the industry," and argued that the change undermined "the predictability of Norwegian industrial policy".

Major deals and strategic decisions

• Sale of Hydro Rolling (2021). After the strategic review Aasheim launched in 2019, the company agreed on March 5, 2021, to sell its rolling business to the private equity firm KPS Capital Partners for EUR 1,380 million on an enterprise value basis. The deal covered seven plants, one research centre and around 5,000 employees, about 650 of them in Norway and most of the rest in Germany. In 2020 the business had contributed about NOK 24 billion in revenue, 17 percent of the group total. "Our Rolling business will continue its development under new ownership," Aasheim said. The sale was completed on June 1, 2021.
• Battery recycling (2020). In June 2020 the company and the Swedish battery maker Northvolt formed a 50/50 joint venture, Hydro Volt, to build a pilot plant for recycling electric vehicle batteries in Fredrikstad, Norway, following a 2019 investment in Northvolt.
• Hueck (2023). The company completed the acquisition of the German building systems and extrusion company Hueck on February 28, 2023, giving the group five extrusion plants, three recycling plants and around 2,000 employees in Germany.
• Alumetal (2023). On June 30, 2023, the company acquired more than 97 percent of the Polish aluminium recycler Alumetal through a tender offer, as part of Aasheim's goal of doubling the group's use of post-consumer scrap by 2025.
• Alunorte partnership with Glencore (2023). In April 2023 the company agreed to sell a 30 percent interest in Alunorte, together with a 5 percent stake in the bauxite producer Mineração Rio do Norte, to Glencore. Aasheim said proceeds would be used "for strategic growth and for shareholder distribution" and that Alunorte remained "a core strategic asset". The transaction, with a total enterprise value of US$1.11 billion, was completed on December 1, 2023, leaving the group with 62 percent of Alunorte.
• Impairments (2023). In December 2023 the company said it would report impairment losses of about NOK 5.9 billion in its fourth-quarter results, related to Alunorte, the Paragominas bauxite mine and the Tomago aluminium smelter in Australia, citing weak alumina markets and uncertainty over Australian power prices.

Financial and market performance

Aasheim took over a company with weak earnings. In the fourth quarter of 2019 the company reported underlying earnings before financial items and tax of NOK 560 million, and its improvement programme delivered NOK 1 billion that year, against a target of NOK 0.5 billion. The board proposed a dividend of NOK 1.25 per share for both 2019 and 2020.

Results rose sharply as aluminium markets tightened. Full-year 2021 EBITDA was NOK 28,010 million, against NOK 13,106 million in 2020, and the improvement programme reached NOK 6.3 billion. The company reported a return on capital employed of 18.6 percent for 2021 and proposed a dividend of NOK 5.40 per share. Aasheim and Mejdell described 2021 as the company's strongest financial result since it became a focused aluminium and energy company in 2007. 2022 was another record year, with adjusted EBITDA of NOK 39,664 million and a new NOK 2 billion share buyback programme.

Adjusted EBITDA fell to NOK 22,258 million in 2023 on lower aluminium and alumina prices and weaker extrusion volumes. According to the 2023 annual report, the company averaged a return on capital employed of 11 percent over the previous five years, above its 10 percent target, and had distributed NOK 30.7 billion to shareholders since 2019. The board proposed NOK 7 billion in shareholder distributions for 2023.

The workforce changed with these portfolio moves. The company cited about 35,000 employees when Aasheim was appointed in 2019, 31,000 in early 2022 after the sale of Rolling, and 32,000 when Aasheim's successor was named in 2024.

Board memberships and outside roles

• Norsk Industri (Federation of Norwegian Industries): board member from about 2009 and deputy chair from 2010; chair from May 5, 2015, succeeding Kjersti Kleven. Her Outokumpu biography gives her term as chair as 2015 to 2017.
• International Aluminium Institute: member from 2015 to 2019 and chair from 2016 to 2018. She was elected chair in May 2016, succeeding Abdulla Kalban of Emirates Global Aluminium.
• Yara: board member from 2010 to 2015, chair of the audit committee from 2011 to 2015 and vice chair from 2014 to 2015.
• Veidekke: board member from 2000 to 2010, member of the audit committee from 2000 to 2008 and its chair from 2009 to 2010.
• Qatalum: vice chair of the board from 2008 to 2019.
• European Round Table for Industry and International Council on Mining and Metals: member from 2019 to 2024.
• Nordic CEOs for a Sustainable Future: as chief executive Aasheim took part in the alliance, which met the prime ministers of the five Nordic countries in Reykjavík in August 2019.
• Earlier roles included the board of the Norwegian process industry body PIL from 2001 to 2003 and the Research Council of Norway from 1994 to 1997.
• Outokumpu: board member since 2025 and a member of the remuneration committee; re-elected at the 2026 annual general meeting. Outokumpu lists her as independent of the company and its major shareholders, holding 15,008 shares as of May 13, 2026.
• Intertek plc: member of the board and of the board audit committee since 2025.
• ECOnnect Energy AS: board member since 2025.

Controversies

Aasheim inherited the dispute over the Alunorte refinery in Brazil, where Hydro had been accused of leaking untreated water after the February 2018 rainfall. Teknisk Ukeblad reported that the crisis had weakened Hydro's results for 20 months and cost the company NOK 2.4 billion. Aasheim said internal and external investigations had found no leaks from the residue deposits, but acknowledged that Hydro had been fined for using a channel to drain rainwater into the Pará river without a licence to do so.

The dispute continued in court. In October 2023 a court in Rotterdam held a hearing in a civil lawsuit brought against Norsk Hydro ASA and Dutch subsidiaries by the Brazilian association Cainquiama and nine individuals, centred on the alleged 2018 spill. Hydro denied the allegations and said more than 90 site inspections, including by the authorities, had confirmed that no spill took place. In May 2024, just after Aasheim's term as CEO ended, a lower court in Belém ordered Albras, Alunorte, Paragominas and Norsk Hydro Brazil to pay BRL 50 million in moral damages to Cainquiama over an alleged delay in Alunorte's switch from fuel oil to natural gas, a commitment made under a 2015 agreement with Pará state. Hydro denied the allegations and said it would appeal.

In October 2023 two contractors died within days of each other at group operations: one at the Qatalum joint venture in Qatar on October 15 and one at Alunorte on October 18. "I am deeply saddened that two young men who came to work in our plants did not come home safe to their families," Aasheim said.

Personal life

Aasheim is married to Tom Erling Mikkelsen. The couple were already together in 1978, and in 2019 she said they had been married for 40 years: "Imagine that, 40 years, I am proud of that." Mikkelsen worked for many years in logistics at the salmon farming company Mowi. They have two children, Christian Fredrik and Ingrid Kristine. Their son, Christian Mikkelsen, is a comedian and television presenter known from programmes on NRK. In 2019 she lived in Voksenlia in Oslo.

Recognition

• 2019: ranked 13th on Fortune's Most Powerful Women International list of 50 women leading large global businesses. Fortune noted her use of the role to champion sustainability. Aasheim said: "There are far too few female leaders in business and our industry. If I can help inspire others and thus contribute to both business in general and our industry attracting more female leaders, then it feels both right and important." Teknisk Ukeblad pointed out that 13 is also aluminium's atomic number.
• 2022: invited to give the main lecture at NHH's Thorolf Rafto Challenge, a lecture series named after the human rights campaigner and NHH professor Thorolf Rafto, in which leaders of large Norwegian companies are asked to speak about the ethical dilemmas and human rights challenges their companies face.

See also

• Norsk Hydro
• Svein Richard Brandtzæg
• Eivind Kallevik
• Eivind Reiten
• Elkem
• Outokumpu

External links

• Hydro official website
• Outokumpu Board of Directors biography