Independent rural broadband ISP GoFibre (BorderLink), which in January secured funding of £164m from Gresham House (BSIF) to help build their new full fibre network to 500,000 premises in the North of England and Scottish Borders by around the end of 2025 (here), has today significantly restructured its top leadership team.
At this point, we should say that it’s fairly normal for major investment to be followed by a shake-up of an operator’s senior management structure, which often reflects the investor’s desire to have some control over how their money is being spent and to bring in people with more experienced of how to function at the scale desired.
As a result of today’s news, GoFibre’s existing CEO and founder, Alex Cacciamani, and co-founder, Laura Cacciamani, will be “stepping back from their roles to focus on new entrepreneurial challenges“. The company’s current Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Scott Walters, will also be leaving next month for a new role.
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The search for a new CEO and CFO is already said to be “well advanced” and the Board is “confident that appointments will be made imminently“, but in the meantime the company’s Chair, Chris Jagusz, will take on the role of Executive Chair.
The familiar name of Andy Hepburn has also joined the business as Chief Operating Officer (COO) from Openreach, where he was most recently Director of UK Fibre Build. Andy will be responsible for the planning and execution of GoFibre’s roll out plans, ensuring excellence and speed in delivery.
Chris Jagusz, Executive Chair of GoFibre, said:
“I would like to say a huge thank you to Alex for all he has done over the last five years, working tirelessly to deliver on GoFibre’s mission to close the digital divide, inspiring the team to take the business to the next level and expanding its presence across Scotland and the North of England. Alex leaves an experienced operations team to deliver on GoFibre’s ambitious plans and he will continue to provide support as we move forward. We wish both him and Laura all the very best in their future endeavors.
As GoFibre continues to experience significant growth, it’s critical that we have the right team in place to deliver on our vision and ambition. We’re confident that the changes we are making now will set us up for success in the future and are looking forward to getting everyone into their roles and continuing to deliver.”
We should add that Consumer Director, Sam Calvert, will now become responsible for all consumer, public sector, business, and wholesale customer relationships in a new role as Chief Revenue Officer.
Hostile takeover or exit ? Either way the Cacciamanis are prob a few million richer
More likely they’ve been pushed out given they’ve done a p**s-poor job on actually delivering, well, anything.