BT Group CEO Gavin Patterson is to Step Down Later in 2018

After a difficult couple of years the BT Group has today announced that their Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Gavin Patterson, will be stepping down later this year and the board has already commenced a search to identify his successor. A new boss is expected to be appointed during the second half of 2018.

It’s perhaps fair to say that BT has been under somewhat of a microscope for the past few years and they’ve not exactly had the best run of things, which has resulted in a continuing downward trend for their share value and that’s not made investors happy. At its peak in November 2015 you could still grab BT shares for around 500 and today it’s closer to 200. The reasons for all this are many and varied.

During Patterson’s tenure the company has suffered as Ofcom’s Strategic Review further weakened their position in the market, not least through the greater separation and independence of their network access division (Openreach). This has also given rivals more access to their national UK telecoms network and in the near future Ofcom are expected to have another bash at forcing them to offer Dark Fibre.

On top of that they’ve had to deal with the fallout from an Italian accounting scandal, job cuts, a huge fine and repayment for delayed Ethernet installs, pressure from the government and rival UK ISPs to deliver more FTTP broadband, uncertainty over Brexit, a failure to get their voluntary 10Mbps USO proposal passed, more pension troubles and the costs involved with EE’s merger etc.

Admittedly many of these challenges would have happened regardless of who was in charge at the time but there are only so many punches a company can take before something has to give.

Jan du Plessis, Chairman of BT said:

“Gavin has been with BT for just over 14 years and I want to thank him for his contribution to our business during that time, in particular during the almost five years that he has served as Chief Executive.

The Board is fully supportive of the strategy recently set out by Gavin and his team. The broader reaction to our recent results announcement has though demonstrated to Gavin and me that there is a need for a change of leadership to deliver this strategy.

To that end a number of concrete initiatives have already been launched and Gavin’s commitment to continue to lead the business during this transition phase will provide invaluable continuity. While BT is a very demanding business, with multiple stakeholders, we do have significant opportunities ahead of us. I am confident that, for the remainder of his term, Gavin and his senior management team will continue to display the energy required to deal with every dimension of the task at hand.”

Gavin Patterson, Outgoing CEO of BT Group, said:

“It’s been an honour to lead BT since 2013, and serve as a member of the Board for the last 10 years. Throughout that time I’ve been immensely proud of what we’ve achieved, in particular the transformation of the business in recent years with the launch of BT Sport, the purchase and integration of EE, and the agreement to create greater independence for Openreach. That, combined with the critical expansion of our superfast broadband network to 27m customers, and our stated ambition to reach 10m homes with ultrafast broadband by the mid-2020s have fundamentally repositioned the company. BT is a great business and with the new management team I’ve recently put in place, is I believe very well positioned to thrive in the future.”

At this point BT will no doubt be looking toward the Government’s Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review to see how that will impact their business, which is expected to surface sometime this summer. The review is considering how to make the UK a more attractive place for investment to support the rollout of “full fibre” broadband (FTTP/H) and future 5G Mobile networks, but depending upon the approach it could either bring good or bad news for the beleaguered telecoms giant.

Suffice to say that keeping Gavin in position until the outcome of that review is known would be a wise move as anybody who follows will have a better starting position to mould the company’s future direction, while leaving behind its past baggage.

In separate news we note that BT’s broadband package page has oddly reintroduce their old 40Mbps FTTC based profile and phone line rental package, which offers “average” download speeds of 36Mbps on an 18 month contract from £29.99 a month (plus £59.99 upfront). The operator had previously replaced this service with their 50Mbps package, which is a little bit more expensive.