BT Group Plc named Telia Co AB boss Allison Kirkby Chief Executive Officer, taking over from Philip Jansen.
Kirkby will take the helm of Britain’s challenged former state monopoly and biggest broadband network operator around the end of January at the latest, BT said in a statement on Monday.
Kirkby is “fully supportive” of BT’s strategy, she said in the statement. She had been rumored as a contender to head London-based BT for years, and joined its board in 2019. She’ll get the same salary as her predecessor, which has been held flat since 2018.
She’ll have to tackle a slumping share price and try to add value on top of BT’s £15 billion ($19.3 billion) fiber optic network investment while balancing stakeholders including the government, unions, and the company’s two big strategic shareholders — French telecom tycoon Patrick Drahi and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG.
In the past seven years Kirkby headed three of the biggest Scandinavian telecom companies. She led Swedish telecom giant Telia Co AB since 2020, before that Denmark’s TDC A/S, and prior to that Sweden’s Tele2 AB.
Kirkby is BT’s first female CEO and joins new Vodafone Group Plc boss Margherita Della Valle as one of a small number of women leading the companies in the FTSE 100 Index of Britain’s largest.
Jansen said earlier this month he would step down from the role, after joining in early 2019. He intends to retire from executive life after the handover, BT said.
(Updates with context throughout.)
