By Sachin Ravikumar and Paul Sandle
LONDON (Reuters) -BT Chief Executive Philip Jansen will step down within the next year, having set plans in motion for Britain’s biggest telecoms provider to cut jobs, become leaner and complete the roll-out of a national fibre network.
Jansen had informed BT’s board of directors that he plans to leave at “an appropriate moment” within the next 12 months, BT said on Monday.
Since early 2019, Jansen has steered BT through a crucial period in its 177-year-history, secured funding for a national fibre network for 25 million homes and businesses and handled the arrival of billionaire investor Patrick Drahi on the shareholder register.
Drahi, who owns a 24.5% stake, has pursued debt-fuelled deals to buy telecoms and cable TV assets in France, the United States, Portugal and Israel. He has publicly backed BT’s strategy.
Jansen, a former boss of U.S. payment processing company Worldpay, joined Britain’s biggest broadband and mobile operator in February 2019, setting out to increase network investment by billions of pounds with a pay back in the decades to come.
He also simplified the group, consolidated its enterprise business into one unit and cut the burden of expensive sports broadcasting rights by striking a deal with Discovery.
But the changes have not excited investors, including its second largest, Deutsche Telekom. Since he took over the shares have nearly halved, and they have fallen by more than a third over the last 12 months, reflecting the impact of rising interest rates on its 18.9 billion pounds ($24.2 billion) of debt.
Jansen, 56, recently set out his longer-term vision for the former state monopoly, saying BT would cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030 once it has completed the fibre roll out and adapted to artificial intelligence and other new technologies.
“We’re investing heavily in both BT’s and the UK’s future,” he said in a statement. “We’re building like fury, have now passed over 11 million homes with fibre, have got 5G service to 68% of the country and our customer service is much improved.”
Jansen also improved relations with telecoms regulator Ofcom, with the exception of a misstep earlier this year when he said BT’s network expansion would “end in tears” for some of its competitors, causing Ofcom to delay a decision on BT’s wholesale pricing for internet service providers.
Some analysts questioned whether Jansen’s departure was coming too soon.
“We suspect investors will find this transition a little premature given the fruits of BT’s fibre investments have still yet to be proven out,” analysts at J.P.Morgan wrote in a client note.
BT Chairman Adam Crozier said the board was well prepared for the succession process.
“All appropriate candidates are being considered and we expect to be able to update the market on progress over the course of the summer,” he said.
Analysts named BT’s consumer brands boss Marc Allera and Allison Kirkby, a BT board member and chief executive of Sweden’s Telia, as possible successors.
($1 = 0.7804 pounds)
(Additional reporting by Sarah Young, Editing by Kate Holton and Sharon Singleton)
