Lone Fønss Schrøder

Lone Fønss Schrøder is a Danish entrepreneur and businessperson who founded CashWorks, Inc., Schrøder Consult ApS, and Norfalck AB and has been at the helm of 7 different companies. Currently, Lone is the Chief Executive Officer for Concordium AG. Lone is also the owner of Engelberg Zug Financial Group AG and Fredlyst ApS and is on the board of 14 other companies. 

With extensive executive experience ranging from large-cap companies in aviation, biotech, retail, automotive, oil & gas, and shipping to banks and capital markets, Fønss Schrøder is also the Vice Chairman of Volvo Cars, and a Director at IKEA. 

She spent 22 years at A.P. Moller-Maersk — the world’s largest shipping company — serving as Senior Vice President and founding Maersk Procurement and Star Air. She was also the President of Wallenius Lines, a leading provider of global factory-to-dealer transport solutions and terminal facilities for the automotive industry. 

Lone was also appointed as the Chairman of the Committee by the Minister for Climate, Energy, and Building, Copenhagen, Denmark from 2015-2018 to prepare general conditions for building and construction works and supplies (AB). These conditions were published in Report 1570 of 21 June 2018. 

She is also the author of a number of articles on Large Cap companies' digital strategy development.

She has also been advising the Board of NREP, an urban investor that seeks to improve the built environment of cities, to the benefit of all stakeholders. Additionally, she is a Board member of Aker Horizons, a company that is active in renewable energy, carbon capture, and hydrogen and develops industrial-scale decarbonisation projects.

She previously held the position of Chairman at Nustay A, Chief Executive Officer & Director at Geely Financials Denmark AS and Chairman of Saxo Bank A (a subsidiary of Geely Financials Denmark AS), Chairman at Bioneer A, President & Chief Executive Officer at Walleniusrederierna AB, Senior Vice President for A.P. Møller-Mærsk An and Partner at AGC Biologics A.

Lone holds an M.Sc. in Business Administration and Economics from Copenhagen Business School and a Master in Law (LLM) from the University of Copenhagen and a Blockchain Technologies program from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Lone Fønss did a course in Insurance law in 1985 from the University of Westminster. In 1987, she did her Master's in Law, LLM, specialising in Petroleum Law from University of Oslo.  

She was the Senior Vice President of A.P. Møller - Mærsk (1982-2004) at the age of 28 and was the CEO of Cargo Airline, Star Air. Lone Fønss has been the highest-ranking woman in Maersk, where she held a number of senior management positions, including the Chief Executive role of the shipping company's Bulk and Special Ships division. She also created Maersk Global Procurement. 

From 2005-2009, Lone Fønss was the President and CEO of the world's largest RO/RO shipping company, Swedish Wallenius Lines AB and was the Chairman of the Board of Norwegian Kværner ASA, during the company's successful restructuring. 

She also held roles as a Director of Handelsbanken and as an advisor to Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), which gave her a grounding in finance and inspired her to co-found the Fintech product Cashworks.

Lone Fønss was the Chairman of the government-appointed committee that revised the construction agreement system 2015-2018 (AB-18) and was a member of Exportkanonen.

Currently, she is on the board of some global companies like IKEA, Volvo Cars, Aker Solutions, Akastor, and the CSL group.

Lone Fønss served Saxo Bank as Chairperson, and consequently, and her professional relationship with the founder of Concordium, Lars Seier Christensen, extrapolated into her current role of CEO at the company since 2019.

In an interview with Silicon Republic, Lone Fønss shares experiences of her journey of more than three decades:

"I’ve taken the voyage from big, systemic financial institutions. So, I see it as a natural continuation for me to also understand an element of the cutting-edge technology that’s not only appropriate for financial institutions, but also for other industrial uses.

I prefer working with professional companies that could be both start-ups and large corporations. I think, for me, I want to work with first-class professionals. With globalisation, there’s competition coming from all over the world and I don’t think a company doing what we are doing or what we are set to do can be successful if we don’t aim to have a world-class team.

For me, it doesn’t really matter what size it is. I have started with a sketch on paper many times before and I can work just as well in start-ups as I can in a huge corporation like IKEA, which has nearly 200,000 employees. It all depends on what your attitude to professionalism is."