BT - new Chief Executive Officer

Insider Named New Chief of BT Group

Ben Verwaayen, who helped to transform the BT Group, the telecommunications company into an information technology and broadband-focused communications powerhouse, is leaving and will be succeeded by a longtime BT executive, Ian Livingston.

Analysts said Mr. Livingston, the 43-year-old head of BT’s retail business, was a strong successor, but that Mr. Verwaayen’s departure came a little earlier than expected and could ignite a few jitters ahead of BT’s annual results on May 15.

Some also thought the promotion of the cost-cutting Mr. Livingston could herald fresh job losses at Britain’s biggest fixed-line telecommunications provider.

“We think that Livingston...can get BT focused much more on costs,” analyst at Merrill Lynch wrote in a research note, estimating that BT’s core fixed-line business in Britain could operate with closer to 50,000 employees than the current 80,000.

BT said on Tuesday that Mr. Livingston was the board’s unanimous choice to succeed Mr. Verwaayen and there would be no big change in strategy.

“He was in the kitchen for the last six years,” Mr. Verwaayen told CNBC television. “It’s safe to assume that the strategy we’re in is the strategy we’ll be on with him.”

Mr. Livingston joined BT as finance director in 2002 and became head of its retail business in 2005.

He will succeed Mr. Verwaayen in June and be succeeded as head of BT’s retail division by Gavin Patterson, currently managing director of its consumer business.

Mr. Verwaayen, 56, joined BT in 2002 from Lucent Technologies and spearheaded a drive into network information technology services and broadband which helped to double the group’s share price between 2004 and 2007.