T-Mobile USA parent company Deutsche Telekom announced that CEO Rene Obermann will leave the company effective Dec. 31, 2013. Obermann has been at the company for 16 years, the past seven as CEO.
Replacing Obermann will be Timotheus Höttges, who has been with the company since 2000, most recently serving as CFO. DT noted that Höttges played a central role in the company’s decision to form the Everything Everywhere joint venture in the United Kingdom with France Télécom, as well as the eventually nixed sale of T-Mobile USA to AT&T. DT added that while the T-Mobile USA deal failed, it “did lead to the payment of a considerable break-up fee to Deutsche Telekom,” which included $3 billion in cash and considerable spectrum assets.
Höttges noted that it plans to work with Obermann over the next year to help stabilize DT’s overall decline in revenues and position the company for growth. Those growth plans include investing “heavily primarily in our networks in Germany, but also in those in the [United States], to secure the future of our company.”
DT is in the process of acquiring domestic prepaid operator MetroPCS in a transaction that if approved will see its share in T-Mobile USA dilute to 76%, but fatten the carrier’s spectrum portfolio in order to better support the rollout of LTE services. T-Mobile USA has been hammered as of late in the domestic market with postpaid customer defections offsetting growth in the carrier’s no-contract space.
T-Mobile USA noted earlier this year that it planned to spend $4 billion overhauling its network, including the launch of LTE in 2013.
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