BT Openreach CEO Liv Garfield to Exit in Spring 2014 for Water Utility Firm

Liv Garfield has confirmed that she will step down from her role as the boss of BTOpenreach during spring 2014 and will instead become the new CEO of water company Severn Trent. Openreach is responsible for maintaining and providing access to BT’s national telecoms and broadband ISP network across the United Kingdom.

Garfield has spent a decade within BT after originally leaving Accenture, the management consultancy company, to become a General Manager for the telecoms giant in 2003. Later she was moved to the position of BT Group Director for Strategy and Regulatory Affairs before finally progressing to become CEO of Openreach.

At Openreach Garfield has had to oversee a variety of major developments, such as the on-going deployment of superfast broadband (FTTC/P) technology and Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) provision for rival ISPs.

Liv Garfield said:

“It is a huge wrench to leave Openreach but I feel the time is now right to take on a fresh challenge. Our commercial programme to bring fibre broadband to two thirds of UK premises is almost complete, whilst BT’s public sector broadband partnerships are making good progress.

I am immensely proud of the thousands of Openreach engineers who serve cities, towns, villages and hamlets across the UK. These dedicated men and women work in challenging conditions underground and up telegraph poles – often battling extreme weather – to keep the UK’s critical communications network up and running.

BT has been a terrific employer, giving me lots of room to grow and develop my business skills. It has been a tough decision but I leave Openreach in fantastic shape and have every confidence it will continue to thrive.”

Gavin Patterson, CEO of BTGroup, said:

“Liv has made an enormous contribution to BT over the past 12 years and she’ll be greatly missed. With her leadership, we have taken the company’s commercial fibre roll-out from conception through to delivery.

Ours is one of the fastest fibre broadband deployments anywhere in the world and the UK now leads our major European counterparts in terms of superfast broadband speed and availability. That is a fantastic achievement. Liv, her management team and Openreach’s hard working engineers should be incredibly proud.

We wish Liv every success in her new role.”

The attention will now be turned to her replacement, whom BT said would be announced in “due course“.