How Ben Verwaayen must envy the recent upbeat exit of his chairman, Sir Christopher Bland.
While Sir Christopher left this summer on a high, Mr Verwaayen finds himself suddenly at the helm of an underperforming and out-of-favour group.
To some extent today’s figures were not unexpected: The push to local loop unbundling had to hit BT sometime, despite the group’s continued insistence otherwise.
The delay has largely resulted from technical problems with the process which saw, for example, rivals like Carphone temporarily flail.
And, as the Dutch head pointed out, the group continues to enjoy success. in areas such as its total broadband market share — with 35 per cent of the total base, including local loop unbundled customers.
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But, despite all his efforts to recast the group from an old-fashioned “calls and lines” business into a global IT player, the company is increasingly being viewed again in the light of an ‘old-school’ business.
UK fund managers, who want the safety of the telecoms sector during this turbulent economic period are voting for mobile and moving into stocks like Vodafone.
BT has no mobile division of any scale to speak of and so far its efforts to product snazzy new-age services like Fusion and BT Vision, have underwhelmed both customers and investors.
Mr Verwaayen must produce quickly something to re-ignite interest in the group — or risk leaving on a sour note that would unfairly disregard all the good work he has done.