Chief executive resigns from Britain's biggest mobile phone company a year after it was created by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile
Tom Alexander, the sports car racing chief executive of Orange and T-Mobile, has resigned as boss of Britain's biggest mobile phone company just a year after it was created.
Alexander spearheaded the merger of the UK's third and fourth biggest mobile operators to create market-leader Everything Everywhere, which runs the mobiles of 28m Britons. But on Monday he shocked the City by saying he was leaving the company for "personal reasons".
Alexander, who founded Virgin Mobile in 1998, has been at the forefront of Britain's mobile phone industry for more than a quarter of a century. He will step down at Everything Everywhere at the end of August.
Alexander had been charged with transforming the two ailing brands into a single powerhouse, delivering £3.5bn of cost-savings to its owners, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom. But all has not gone to plan and the company reported a substantial fall in new customers in the first three months of the year along with a 2% decline in earnings.
In an interview ahead of last year's merger Alexander acknowledged that pleasing the company's owners would be a hard task. "We're a British company with two very strong European shareholders. There's a lot of weight on my shoulders but it's an area I know really well. This is what I love. I think we have a fantastic opportunity to make this work," he said.
Speaking on Monday, Alexander said: "It's been my privilege to serve Everything Everywhere these past 12 months, and Orange before that. I'm proud of what we've accomplished: we conducted a rapid integration of the new company, completing a company-wide restructuring, and maintained good commercial momentum throughout, delivering record retention levels and growth on our contract customer base across both brands. There is never an easy time to leave a company that you care deeply for but, for personal reasons, I feel now is a good moment to step back."
Alexander, who has already retired once from the corporate world – when Virgin Mobile was sold to NTL in 2006 – did not elaborate on his reasons for leaving Everything Everywhere. Sources close to the company said they expected Alexander to be followed out of the door by a "wave" of senior executives.
It is understood that France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have become frustrated at the pace of change at Everything Everywhere. Replacing Alexander as chief executive is Olaf Swantee, the head of France Telecom's mobile operations across Europe and a member of the Everything Everywhere board.
The shareholders are understood to have told Everything Everywhere's management that they are no longer prepared to prop it up financially. Everything Everywhere's finance director Richard Moat is understood to be touring investors ahead of a big bond issue.
Alexander was personally involved in picking the much-derided Everything Everywhere name for the company.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/18/everything-everywhere-boss-tom-alexander-quits
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