San Francisco, Jan 5 (IANS): Volvo Cars has announced that Jim Rowan will join the company as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President on March 21.

Rowan succeeds Hakan Samuelsson, who first joined Volvo Cars as a member of the board in 2010 and has held the role of CEO and President since October 2012.

"I am very pleased to welcome Jim Rowan as the new CEO of Volvo Cars," Eric Li, Chairperson of the Board of Volvo Cars, said in a statement.

"Volvo Cars is going through a rapid transformation of digitalisation which is why we wanted to bring in someone with global CEO experience from outside the automotive industry," Li added.

Jim brings with him over three decades of global experience in the consumer and technology sectors, delivering strong growth and profitability through transformation strategies and customer engagement.

He has also worked extensively with digitalisation, disruption, innovation, engineering and supply chains, which will be "valuable" for the future of Volvo Cars to realise its strategic ambitions.

Rowan has worked with Ember as an investor, Board member and CEO since February 2021. He served as CEO of the Dyson Group between 2017-2020 and as COO from 2012-2017. Prior to Dyson, he was the COO of BlackBerry.