Telstra axes executives as it restructures

CFO, tech innovation chief out

Telstra’s chief financial officer, Warwick Bray, and its tech innovation and strategy executive, Stephen Elop, will leave the company as part of a deep-going restructure to implement its ‘Telstra 2022’ (T22) strategy.

Telstra boss Andy Penn last month revealed the first details about T22, which will see a net loss of 8000 jobs at the company. T22 is an effort by Telstra to address the impact of structural changes to the Australian telco market brought about by the National Broadband Network rollout and increased competition in the mobile space.

Bray has been Telstra’s CFO since 2015. Elop, a former Microsoft and Nokia executive, joined Telstra in 2016.

Telstra also revealed that the company’s chief marketing officer, Joe Pollard, and Telstra Wholesale head, Will Irving, will depart.

“Last month I announced the T22 strategy to the market and today I am making further announcements on Telstra’s structure and leadership to ensure we deliver rapidly and effectively on all of the commitments we made to our customers, the market and our team,” Penn said in a statement.

“At the heart of these changes is the simplification of our products and services built on new technology. By mid-next year we will have fully rolled out our market leading products and services.”

“To help deliver these changes, we are announcing a new end-to-end products and technology division of Telstra,” the CEO said. “It means we will significantly increase our technical capabilities around product development and management.”

The significant changes to the telco’s structure and executive team will be effective from 1 October.

As part of the changes the head of Telstra’s enterprise business, Brendon Riley, will become the CEO of the new InfraCo business, which will take charge of most of Telstra’s fixed-line assets — and potentially be spun out into a wholly independent business in the future.

Heading up enterprise will be former SBS boss Michael Ebeid, who joins the company on 8 October.

A product and technology group “will drive an integrated product and technology roadmap for all of Telstra to deliver innovative and simple product experiences,” Telstra said. The company has made an external appointment to head up the group; Telstra said it would reveal details of the appointment shortly.

Vicki Brady will continue to lead the telco’s consumer and small business group. David Burns has been appointed to lead global business services (GBS), which will bring together customer service and internal support services.

Telstra chief operating officer Robyn Denholm has shifted to the role of chief financial officer and head of strategy.

Alex Badenoch has been appointed group executive, transformation and people, and will “the T22 strategy transformation execution as well as drive the way the company works and operates, strengthening employee engagement”.

Carmel Mulhern will continue as Telstra’s legal and corporate affairs chief.

Telstra said that Nikos Katinakis will join the company as group executive, networks and IT. Earlier this month the telco revealed that group managing director, networks, Mike Wright, will depart in September. In March, Telstra CIO John Romano left the telco.

Katinakis  has held roles at  Reliance Jio in India, Canada’s Rogers Communications and Ericsson.

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“Ultimately the simplified and streamlined structure will remove duplication, hierarchy and silos across the organisation. It will help us improve the service that we provide to our customers, the efficiency of the business and our competitiveness, as well as increase our productivity and reduce costs,” Penn said.

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