Telecom CEO Pushed Out in Europe

Swedish-Finnish telecom operator TeliaSonera AB TLSN (SWEDEN), the biggest in northern Europe, forced its chief executive Anders Igel to resign, effective July 31. Igel had been CEO of the firm since 2002 when Swedish Telia and Finnish Sonera merged in 2002. For some time now, Igel has been under pressure from shareholders, employees and members of the board. A key criticism has been speed with which he has moved to set new priorities and the pace he has followed in carrying out existing goals. One area that continues to rankle the board and shareholders has been Igel's failure to resolve ownership disputes with two of the company's key markets, Turkey and Russia.

TeliaSonera announced it might take 12 months before a suitable CEO is appointed. In the interim, CFO Kim Ignatius will hold the chief executive role. In announcing the change in management, the chairman, Tom von Weymarn and the board said,

"TeliaSonera needs a CEO who can improve the spirit and commercial drive..... make acquisitions and speed up efforts to cut costs and jobs ... We are looking for strong and motivating leadership focused on growth.... We're looking for someone who can speed up execution of strategy and can drive growth in addition to cost efficiency."

He went on to say, "we are still focused on our home market, our investment in Spain, and our Eastern positions..." referring to Russia, Turkey and the Baltic States." "We urgently need solutions to our Eastern positions."

Analysts Sally Banks and Mark Giles at Ovum, a European telecom consulting company, offered a few possible choices to take Igel's place.

There are a couple of obvious external candidates, who as far as we are aware are currently unemployed and could potentially fill the gap. From Deutsche Telekom Group's recent clearouts - Elek Straub, ex-CEO of Magyar Telekom and Kai Uwe-Ricke, ex-CEO of Deutsche Telekom might possibly be interested in a new challenge. Whoever succeeds as the new CEO will face some seriously tough challenges ahead as the soon to be ex-CEO has suggested that the company needs heavy re-engineering to get it on track.

Initial market response to the change has been positive but the company has a great deal of work to fix its current difficulties and get the right management in place.

For more on the change see:

The Local Sweden's News In English
Financial Times (registration req.)
Forbes
Daily News & Analysis