Deutsche Telekom’s CEO said the operator had chosen a turnaround specialist with “the right spirit and attitude” to head up its struggling T-Systems subsidiary.
Adel Al-Saleh joins from Northgate Information Solutions Group, a UK-based business specialised in providing software solutions and technology services for human resources management.
NIS was taken private in 2008 by private equity firm KKR, who appointed Al-Saleh in 2011 to develop a turnaround strategy.
The 53-year-old helped to put in place a streamlined portfolio, a new strategy, and efficient and competitive operations, Deutsche Telekom said.
Al-Saleh, who also spent 19 years working at IBM, begins his new role on 1 January next year, replacing Reinhard Clemens.
He takes on a company that saw sales fall over five percent to €3.4 billion and adjusted EBITDA slump over 24 percent to €232 million in the first half of this year. Sales and profits also declined in 2016.
Deutsche Telekom CEO Timotheus Hoettges said: “[Adel] has the right spirit and attitude paired with a profound knowledge for the job.
“[He] has a proven record of turning businesses around.
“He will start to become acquainted with T-Systems right away and will use the phase until the end of the year to bring himself up to speed.”
Last month, T-Systems won a contract to run German energy and mining group LEAG’s IT estate.
It also launched the first product powered by ngena, the global network alliance for enterprises of which it was a co-founder.
Iliad has acquired football rights in France and launched its opco in Italy as it looks to reboot after a disappointing set of financial results.
The departure of Three UK's Chief Commercial Officer after just 18 months in the job has triggered a shake-up of the mobile operator's top team.
TalkTalk has agreed to sell 80,000 business customers to rival Daisy Group in a £175 million deal.
Bulgaria is the third A1 Telekom Austria Group opco to get rebranded as the telco looks to market itself as a provider of "advanced" IT, IoT, cloud and content services.
Orange Business Services has expanded its work with Dobroflot by developing a customised IoT solution for the Russian fishing company.
@eurocomms