The TV services that the former Romtelecom relaunched under the Dolce brand in 2006 are the only ones to have seen constant growth in 2003-2016 under all five chief executive officers to have run the company, unlike fixed telephony, which witnessed constantly decline, and the fixed Internet services that stopped growing during the term in office of Greek executive Stefanos Theocharopoulos, the last CEO appointed by OTE’s Athens HQ.
The most thorough restructuring process of the company was conducted during the term of US executive James Hubley, when Romtelecom switched from 29,000 to a little more than 12,000 employees. During Hubley’s almost four-year term the operator reached its highest number of fixed telephony customers, 4.337 million in December 2004, as well as the worst decline, losing more than 800,000 over ten quarters after that.
Hubley’s term ended well on the TV segment, even though Romtelecom sold cable TV company Cable Vision Romania (CVR) in 2005, because its direct-to-home TV service Dolce launched in November 2006 gained about 60,000 customers in two months, 10,000 more than CVR had. The launch of Dolce was one of the most important strategic moves Romtelecom made in 2003-2006.
The following CEO, Greek Yorgos Ioannidis, conducted the second harshest restructuring of the past 13 years, with almost 5,000 people being let go. This was also the time with the strongest rise in the number of customers.
While Ioannidis was in office Romtelecom gained about one million customers for TV and fixed Internet each, a performance the establishment of a new cable TV company NextGen helped in part achieve. The company was designed by Ioannidis and former chief commercial officer residential segment Joerg Zeddies a solution to tackle RCS&RDS and the other cable TV companies. NextGen first operated on the market by keeping quiet about its affiliation to Romtelecom. Ioannidis even poached RCS&RDS chief commercial officer Ovidiu Ghiman at the time. Ghiman is the only executive part of Ioannidis’ team that is still with the management team of Telekom (now in charge of the B2B segment).
During the term of Stefanos Theocharopoulos, who in July 2011 was already CEO of the other telecom company OTE had in Romania, mobile telephony operator Cosmote, Romtelcom continued growth on the fixed Internet and TV segments but lost ground on the fixed telephony segment. Theocharopoulos, the last CEO of Romtelecom (and Cosmote) appointed by OTE’s management in Athens, only let go about 400 people during his term in office.
Fixed Internet growth continued for only four more quarters during the term of German executive Nikolai Beckers, chosen by Claudia Nemat, member of the Deutsche Telekom (DT) board, to run the Romania operations. It reached a record 1.250 million customers in March 2014 and then the decline started and has yet to stop. Beckers got the second-best TV segment performance, gaining almost 200,000 customers during his less than two-year term that ended abruptly as agreed by both shareholders in December 2015.
It was during his term that the shift from the Cosmote and Romtelecom brands to Telekom happened, an operation that entailed a discreet yet significant restructuring of the group, with more than 1,500 people leaving. This operational integration, agreed upon by former minister Dan Nica and Nikolai Beckers and OTE/DT stood out for the high number of ‘casualties’ among members of the management team, as the new boss started removing the redundant management positions in the former Cosmote and Romtelecom. Among those that left at the time include Panos Makris, who had just been promoted chief commercial officer of the entire group, Alexandru Munteanu, sales manager with Cosmote and Germanos and Liliana Danaila, Cosmote’s HR manager.
Telekom has been run by Slovak executive Miroslav Majoros since January 2016, during which its performance has been stable.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)