BT Group is in search of a new leader after chief executive Philip Jansen informed the board that he plans to leave within the next 12 months.
Jansen intends to step down from his role “at an appropriate moment” in the next 12 months. The board is conducting a formal succession process.
According to a statement by BT Group Chairman Adam Crozier, the succession process is something the board was well prepared for. Plans call for providing an update on the progress sometime over the summer. In the meantime, it’s “business as usual.”
Over the course of his four and a half years as chief executive, Jansen led the company to deploy, through EE, 5G to 68% of the country and pass over 11 million homes with fiber.
But CCS Insight analyst Kester Mann said Jansen had been on increasingly shaky ground at BT, whose shares have almost halved since he took over in early 2019.
“The CEO has endured a rollercoaster ride at BT,” Mann said in a statement. “He presided over the operator’s impressive response to the pandemic; embarked on a massive cost-saving drive; oversaw a major acceleration in the deployment of full fibre; witnessed Patrick Drahi take a near-25% stake in the company; and watched thousands of staff strike over pay.”
Drahi, the owner of the telecom group Altice, is now the largest shareholder in BT, which has been the subject of takeover speculation, although Drahi has said he doesn’t plan to made a bid for the company, according to The Guardian. The second largest shareholder in BT is Deutsche Telekom.
While many names inevitably will be suggested as Jansen’s replacement, no obvious initial candidates appear to be at hand, according to Mann. “BT will likely cast its net wide, both internally, elsewhere within the telco sector, and potentially in a different industry altogether,” he said.
A couple months ago, BT Group announced it will be cutting 55,000 jobs in the next several years, with a sizable portion of those jobs replaced by artificial intelligence (AI). The total workforce is expected to be reduced from 130,000 to about 75,000-90,000 by the fiscal year ending March 2030.