By Paul Sandle
LONDON (Reuters) – BT Group appointed Allison Kirkby, a board member and the boss of Sweden’s Telia Company, as its next chief executive, replacing Philip Jansen, who is leaving before the completion of his multi-billion pound push into fibre networks.
Kirkby, a non-executive director at BT since 2019, will be the first female CEO of the former British telecoms monopoly.
At Telia, she has shed staff, divested assets and streamlined operations, as well as investing heavily in 5G networks, since taking the top job in May 2020.
Jansen, who said earlier this month that he would step down from Britain’s biggest broadband and mobile company within the next year, has pursued a similar strategy to turn around BT.
He has set out a plan to cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030, by which time BT will have completed its fibre roll-out and will have deployed new technologies such as AI across its operations.
Kirkby said she supported BT’s current strategy, which includes investing billions of pounds in building a national fibre broadband network and extending 5G mobile coverage.
“Having been a member of the BT Group board for the past four years, I’m fully supportive of our strategy and am excited about leading it into its next phase of development,” she said in a statement on Monday.
Telia chair Lars-Johan Jarnheimer said he and the board regretted that Kirkby had chosen to leave the company, where she had made a “positive and lasting impact”.
Shares in BT, which have fallen by more than 45% since Jansen took over in 2019, were trading down 0.7% on Monday. Telia’s stock, which is down 29% since the beginning of May 2020, fell 4.2%.
Franco-Israeli telecoms tycoon Patrick Drahi has built up a 24.5% stake in BT through his Altice UK vehicle, but he said in May he did not intend to make a takeover bid.
A spokesperson for Altice UK declined to comment on Kirkby’s appointment.
Jansen will remain chief executive until Kirkby takes over, BT said, and he will be available to support the handover until the end of March 2024, at which point he intends to retire from executive life.
Kirkby will be paid an annual salary of 1.1 million pounds ($1.4 million), plus a bonus of up to 200% of salary and other share awards, in line with Jansen’s remuneration, BT said.
($1 = 0.7777 pounds)
(Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru and Paul Sandle in London; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil, Kate Holton, Kirsten Donovan and Louise Heavens)
