TeliaSonera announced a number of senior management changes that will see group CTO Sverker Hannervall leave his full-time position at the company on Wednesday this week (Jul.1).
Hannervall, who has been with the Sweden-based operator for seven years, will continue to advise the CEO over the next 12 months. Staffan Åkesson has been appointed acting CTO, while Jonas Hasselberg and Jannike Grüner will be co-acting group CCO.
In other management changes, Hélène Barnekow is assuming the position of EVP Sweden, while Malin Frenning will take on a new role in the group's executive management team as SVP overseeing technology and transformation.
Barnekow has been with TeliaSonera since April 2014, while Frenning has a long track record at the company. She is credited with establishing the operator as an integrated company in Sweden, offering mobile, fixed telephony, fixed broadband and TV services to 10 million customers.
TeliaSonera added that Frenning "has also established the transformation program 'Invest to save' that will deliver SEK1.3 billion [€141 million/$156 million] in full run rate savings annually from 2018."
TeliaSonera, which reported a 7 per cent drop in net income to SEK15.5 billion in 2014, is facing what it recently described as a challenging macro-economic environment in Europe and Asia (Eurasia). It is in the process of implementing changes at some of its units outside of Sweden in order to improve its overall group strategy.
For example, TeliaSonera and Telenor plan to combine their respective Danish businesses, saying that fundamental change" is needed in the market, where competition is fierce "and will remain so in the future". The two operators last week shrugged off a European Commission (EC) statement of objections to the proposed merger, describing it as nothing more than an "ordinary event" in such a merger process.
In Norway, the company is now able to implement its expansion plans after the Norwegian Competition Authority (NCA) in February approved the Sweden-based group's plan to acquire the Norwegian operations of Tele2.
TeliaSonera is also reviewing its presence in Spain, where it operates the market's fourth mobile operator, Yoigo. Last year it said the Spanish business remains sub-scale with a market share of around 7 per cent. TeliaSonera has a 76.6 per cent stake in Yoigo.
For more:
- see this TeliaSonera release
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