Vodafone CEO ousted

3 years ago 1

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Vodafone Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Nick Read will step down at the end of 2022, after he failed to halt a years-long slide in the telecommunication giant’s share price and mergers with major rivals failed to materialize.

After four years in the post and 21 years at Vodafone, Read will be replaced on an interim basis by Chief Financial Officer Margherita Della Valle while the board, led by Chairman Jean-Francois van Boxmeer, seeks a replacement.

Read will stay on an as adviser until the end of March, the company said in a statement on Monday.

“I agreed with the board that now is the right moment to hand over to a new leader who can build on Vodafone’s strengths and capture the significant opportunities ahead,” Read said in a statement Monday.

Vodafone’s share price has sunk 44% since Read took over in October 2018. In that time the Newbury, England-based mobile and broadband giant has retrenched and cut debt.

Read’s biggest move may have been to spin out and list the company’s tens of thousands of mobile masts, just selling a stake in Frankfurt-listed listed Vantage Towers AG to a private equity consortium in a deal that valued the business €16.2 billion ($16.3 billion) last month.

But Read struggled to finalize deals he targeted to reduce the number of players in some of Vodafone’s biggest markets such as the UK, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Despite a string of deals outside of Europe, of those markets only a small deal in Portugal has been agreed. An approach for the Italian business was rebuffed, a merger opportunity in Spain was missed, and talks with UK rival Three CK Hutchison are public but have yet to conclude.

“Vodafone faces intractable headwinds with Germany punching below its weight, cost-of-living crisis weakening support for market repair and the most readily deliverable transaction already announced,” said Jefferies analyst Jerry Dellis in a note to clients.

He added that leverage remains “uncomfortably high” after the Vantage deal and that the dividend policy should be treated as under review.