BT Continues to Play Musical Chairs as Wholesale CEO Nigel Stagg Exits

BT’s seemingly endless merry-go-round of senior managerial changes has continued today with the surprise news that Nigel Stagg, CEO of BTWholesale, is to step down from the UK telecoms giant after 36 long years of service. A successor will apparently be “announced in due course“.

Stagg is a familiar name for BT and indeed over the past 36 years he has held multiple positions within the business, such as being the Director of BT Conferencing, Managing Director of BT Enterprises, Managing Director of Retail Customer Service and Managing Director of BT Business until 2011 when he became CEO of BTWholesale.

Sadly no information on the reason for Stagg’s departure has been given, although the man himself was keen to say that he has “nothing but respect and admiration for the tremendous people in BT and I wish them continued success. It has been a pleasure to work with so many talented people over many years“.

Gavin Patterson, BT Group’s CEO, said:

“Nigel has made a terrific contribution over many years. He has brought a wealth of commercial and operational skills and experience to all the roles he has held and he has helped us propel the company forwards. I’d like to thank him on behalf of the company and I wish him all the very best for the future.”

The future of BTWholesale is a not uncommon topic around these parts and indeed there have previously been hints that BT might like to see the business being folded into their semi-separate Openreach division (here), which raised a few eyebrows.

At the same time Ofcom’s on-going strategic review, which is currently trying to decide whether or not to split Openreach from BT’s control, may also have a significant impact upon BTWholesale’s future and so too might the recent merger with EE. Incidentally BT formally completed the merger deal with EE today.

Suffice to say that BT has some big restructuring work to do over the next few years.