BT Picks Adam Crozier to Replace Jan du Plessis as UK Chairman

After a long hunt, the BT Group has today officially announced that the former CEO of ITV, Adam Crozier, has been chosen to replace Jan du Plessis as Chairman when he retires from the UK role – thought to be worth £700,000-a-year – on 1st December 2021.

Jan du Plessis has been a key figure within BT and helped to oversee the many changes that flowed from Ofcom’s 2016 Strategic Review of Digital Communications (full summary), which among other things forced the operator’s network access division (Openreach) to become a distinct “legally separate” company with its own board.

Meanwhile, the group’s new CEO, Philip Jansen, seems to be moving further away from their TV business and appears to be more interested in fuelling a major upgrade of their national broadband infrastructure, which recently saw the operator commit to a £15bn rollout of their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to 25 million UK premises by December 2026 (here).

Suffice to say that the BT Group is going through somewhat of a restructuring exercise at the moment, and Adam Crozier has certainly had plenty of experience on that front. He is currently Chairman of Whitbread plc, ASOS plc, Kantar Group Limited, as well as a non-executive director of Sony Corporation. On top of that, he’s also been CEO of both ITV and Royal Mail Holdings, which both required a lot of modernisation.

Adam Crozier said:

“It is an honour to join the Board of BT and to succeed Jan as Chair. BT is a hugely important company, with a critical role to play in building the digital networks and services to support the UK’s future. I look forward to working with the Board, Philip and his executive team to create value for all our stakeholders.”

Philip Jansen, BT Group Chief Executive, said:

“I would like to thank Jan for his leadership over the last four years. He has overseen the achievement of significant milestones and the recent improvement in BT’s fortunes and his careful stewardship has left the business in a better, stronger position. On behalf of the Executive Committee and all our colleagues, I would like to wish him well for the future. I am delighted to welcome Adam to BT and I really look forward to working with him as we target returning BT to consistent growth.”

Under the proposed plan, Adam will join the Board as an independent non-Executive Director and Chairman Designate on 1st November 2021 and will then become Chairman with effect from 1st December 2021, when Jan retires from the BT Board.

Adam will also step down as Chairman of ASOS plc on 29th November 2021 and will NOT put himself forward for re-election at their upcoming annual general meeting. He will also step down as a non-executive director of Sony from 31st December 2021.

On joining the Board, Adam will be appointed to the Nominations Committee and will succeed Jan as Chair of that committee on 1st December 2021.