It didn’t take long for Orange to rush out a press release after the news leaked out yesterday that it wanted to replace its UK CEO Bernard Ghillebaert. Tom Alexander, the founder of *Virgin Mobile* in the UK, will take the helm at Orange UK in December.
Alexander will be joining an operator very much in need of refreshing after years of declining profitability and overall stature in the UK market: once the leader in terms of subscribers, it is now number-three; once perceived as a cutting-edge brand, after seven years under the ownership of France Telecom, it’s commonly thought of as an also-ran.
One thing Alexander will be bringing to the equation is his successful track record with the youth segment, which is largely seen as key to growing not just the subscriber base, but also usage of new services, specifically around mobile content. (As I mentioned yesterday, one problem Orange UK apparently has is that its subs base today is skewed at older users.)
Alexander founded *Virgin Mobile* in 1999 but left in 2006 around the time of the merger with NTL (now rebranded Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED) of course), along with a number of the other executives that had built up the company into an upstart, youth-oriented MVNO — one of the few success stories in that ill-fated genre. For its part, since it was bought for £962.4 million ($2 billion at today’s rates), *Virgin Mobile* has struggled under its parent company, cancelling a dud mobile TV service and facing stagnation in its customer growth, which is currently under 4.5 million.
Olaf Swantee, Orange Group’s senior executive VP for personal communication services, UK & EME, is understood to be behind the changes. He has been conducting a strategic review of the business and last month Eric Abensur left his role as head of Orange Broadband in the UK. Ghillebaert, who previously worked at France Telecom-controlled Mobistar in Belgium, will take on an FT group role as EVP of customer sales and experience. release
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2007\/10\/23\/419-orange-appoints-new-uk-ceo-tom-alexander-founder-of-virgin-mobile\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_bac296ef074d213f9fe9244dcbc9b966","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}