Big exit

The end of the year is fast approaching and the world is full of people who have just about had enough. Some are choosing to make their own exit, looking for greener pastures in the New Year, while others are having the door held open for them by judgmental colleagues, investors or even the government.

But they say when one door closes another one opens and that’s certainly the case for Lu Xiangdong, now a former vice president of China Mobile. Unfortunately the door that’s opened for him is made entirely of iron bars as Lu is being packed off to the big house to serve a life term for accepting bribes to the tune of $2.5m between 2003 and 2011. Lu was investigated in early 2012 when he ran the company’s marketing operations and digital business.

Fair do’s to China for trying to root out corruption, which was once perceived as rife. Earlier this year several officials in the country’s biggest oil business, China National Petroleum Corp, came under the microscope and investigations have also extended to the shipping industry of late.

The CEO of Belgian incumbent operator Belgacom, Didier Bellens, was also feeling the long arm of the government, having been sacked by the state, which is the firm’s largest shareholder. Prime Minister Elio di Rupo said the Government was unable to tolerate the public criticisms that Bellens has recently levelled at it.

In a recent speech Bellens likened the Prime Minister’s approach to the Government’s annual dividend from Belgacom to a child holding its hands out in expectation at Christmas. Now reports suggest that the Belgian Government does not want to pay Belle:ns the hefty severance fee that is written into his contract, which may lead to a lengthy legal dispute between the ousted CEO and his former shareholder. You’re either with us or against us I’m afraid.

Moving on to the Informer’s friend Payne now, who is quitting the UK network joint venture MBNL after five years. Graham Payne, MBNL’s managing director will leave with financial director Brian More O’Ferrall, to be replaced by Pat Coxen of EE and Gervase King of 3UK.

MBNL was the network JV created by T-Mobile and 3UK in 2007 and is now owned by 3 with EE. The outfit has installed a new management team as the organisation shifts from the integration of the various UK networks held by its parents to an operational and cost-control model.

EE CEO Olaf Swantee said Payne had delivered “one of the most challenging yet successful 3G integration programmes across the world,” and Payne will remain throughout a six-month handover period.

With her expertise n pushing large volumes of stuff through big pipes, it’s no surprise that Liv Garfield is to step down as CEO of BT’s Openreach during the spring, to take up a new challenge as CEO of Severn Trent, the FTSE 100 water company. The Informer suspects that Severn Trent’s pipes are a lot leakier than Openreach’s however.

There’s plenty of carriers with leaky pipes out there though. Such is the warning from revenue assurance specialist Haud Systems, which the Informer met with recently. We’re talking ‘grey routes’ here, or international links that can be used by unscrupulous operators to avoid paying local interconnect fees to their peers, and these are costing carriers tens of millions in lost revenue.

source : www.telecoms.com