She will take over the role from outgoing Philip Jansen by the end of January 2024
BT Group has appointed Allison Kirkby, one of its non-exec board members since 2019, as its next CEO. Kirkby has been President and CEO of Telia group for three and a quarter years. Telia has headquarters in Sweden and operates in the Nordic and Baltic regions.
Kirkby has senior roles in telecoms since 2010, briefly heading up TDC before moving to Telia and prior to that at Tele2, Virgin Media and Shine Group.
She will be BT’s first female CEO and only one of nine women leading a FTSE 100 company, the Financial Times points out. The head of BT’s consumer division, Marc Allera had been touted as the most likely next CEO and Olaf Swantee, former head of EE mobile, had also been mentioned in the industry.
Interesting juncture
Kirkby will take over at an interesting juncture. BT’s shareholders are fed up with years of poor performance – shares were worth 479.5p in early December 2015, before the Italian accounting scandal at the BT Global Business unit became public in 2016. They are now worth 123.4p. The share price has tumbled 25% in the last year alone, and by 46% since outgoing CEO Philip Jansen became in February 2019.
Jansen’s salary is frozen at the rate he joined, £1.1 million, until he retires from BT. In June 2023, Sky News reported “Jansen is understood to have been paid approximately £3m in BT’s last financial year, slightly down on the previous 12 months”.
Jansen attracted considerable scepticism when he recently claimed that BT would shed up to 40% or about 55,000 its workforce by 2030. Closer scrutiny shows that by that time, BT’s wholesale subsidiary, Openreach, will have finished its fibre and many of that number are in fact contractors involved in the roll-out.
Jansen said about 10,000 employees’ jobs would be replaced by AI. Whatever the numbers, Kirkby will be under pressure to get costs down, the share price up and improve customers’ faith in the brand.
Main shareholder
Another potential headache, the Israel-French telecoms billionaire Patrick Drahi, has faded somewhat. He controls the Altice Group, is hovering in the wings as BT’s biggest shareholder with just under 25%. He has repeatedly denied having any intention of trying to gain control of the British incumbent but last week reportedly was on the cusp of increasing his holding from 24.5% to 29.9%, just below the threshold of triggering scrutiny under the National Security and Investment Act.
However, he now has his hands full and reputational damage from a procurement scandal in Portugal.
Closer to home
Kirkby said in a statement, “After almost 10 years of living apart from my family, and the unique opportunity now offered to me in the UK, I have carefully considered and decided to leave Telia and take on a new challenge.”
Shareholders approved earlier BT’s remuneration policy. this month, which means Kirkby will be paid an annual salary of £1.1 million, plus a performance-linked bonus of 120% of salary. Half of this “will be deferred into BT Group shares for a further three years with no additional performance conditions”, according to the company.