Alcatel-Lucent's chairman and chief executive have finally given into shareholder pressure and are both to leave their posts.
The two drove through the merger of France's Alcatel with the US' Lucent Technologies two years ago. It is has not been a fruitful marriage, with the new entity's share price falling 62% since the merger, which has never made a profit.
Chairman Serge Tchuruk (formerly CEO of Alcatel) and CEO Patricia Russo (from Lucent) have incurred the wrath of shareholders for the company's poor performance. They recently voted in measures that made it easier to get ride of executives who aren't performing and have made use of those powers on receiving the latest quarters results.
Alcatel-Lucent reported better than expected sales and profit (€93 million adjusted operating profit, up from a €19 million net loss this time last year) from April to June, but this was wiped out by an write-down, including €810 million from its CDMA operations.
Alcatel-Lucent's April-June net result fell to a loss of €1.1 billion. This was the sixth loss-making quarter in a row.
The company said Russo will leave by the end of the year, while Tchuruk will go on 1 October. As yet there has been no word about possible successors.
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