EE and BT’s UK Consumer Division CEO Marc Allera to Step Down
Telecoms and broadband giant BT Group has today announced that the CEO of their UK Consumer Division (EE), Marc Allera, is to step down from the role on 31st March 2025. The operator also confirmed that Claire Gillies would then become CEO-Designate and a member of its Executive Committee on 10th December 2024, as part of a transition process.
Marc has become somewhat of a familiar face as EE’s boss, having held the position of CEO since as far back as January 2016, before taking on the expanded role of Consumer CEO at both BT and EE, following the merger. More recently he also became the Chairman of the joint venture between BT Group & Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT Sports) and, earlier this year named, was named Chair of the Board for Jagex.
Marc’s replacement, Claire Gillies, is similarly experienced and is said to have more than 23 years’ experience in telecoms, having worked at Bell Canada since 2000 in a variety of senior leadership roles. Most recently, she was President of Bell Canada’s Wireless and Consumer Divisions where she ran a business generating CA$14bn (c.£8bn) in revenues with more than 8,000 colleagues and over 20 million customer subscriptions.
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Allison Kirkby, CEO of BT Group, said:
“Marc has been an outstanding leader of BT’s Consumer unit, contributing significantly to the company’s growth, and to multiple key initiatives such as leading the team through the integration of EE into BT Group, the creation of the BT Sport joint venture with Warner Bros Discovery, and launching New EE as our lead consumer brand.
I am also grateful to Marc for his support to me this year, and for the support I know he’ll give to Claire as they work alongside each other over the next few months. As he moves on beyond BT in the Spring of next year, we all wish him every success.
I’m delighted to welcome Claire to BT. She brings a wealth of international telecoms experience and has a track record of driving growth in both consumer focused and retail businesses. She will be a brilliant addition to our team as we continue to grow BT’s Consumer division, and EE into the UK’s leading consumer brand for converged connectivity.”
Claire herself added that she was “beyond excited” to take on the new role. But changes of management can often foreshadow changes in company strategy, although today’s announcement doesn’t appear to signal any particular divergence from the operator’s existing plans for their Consumer Division.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I wonder if this will soften the removal of “BT” as a consumer company, even if things are the same behind the scenes.
To me it makes no sense to break the relationship a chunk of your customers have with the brand, to “move them” to EE, to throw away that loyalty. Especially as migrations haven’t been pain-free, customers first impressions of EE is going to be poor, followed by them looking elsewhere surely?
Always on the cards once he was overlooked for the top job. Wonder where he will end up.
Can we have Hans Snook back? What a guy! Anyone remember the days of Orange and this word called “innovation” …
Rather like Peter Erskine at o2. Things were great with him in charge.
I feel it in my water that whoever refreshes the ranks of up-top macho leadership . . . that the delivery of digital voice (Still waiting a year on) and other delights (FTTP) will be hastened forthwith, even if that means rolling up the sleeves, tucking tie into shirt cleavage and mucking in with the horny-handed sons of telecoms on the street. I’ll put a light in the window.