Telstra job losses fear

Four top executives first to go in huge restructure

TELSTRA staff are bracing for chief Andy Penn to start widescale job cuts after he sacked four key executives yesterday in the first step of a huge company-wide restructure.

Mr Penn has unveiled a deep shake-up of his senior management team which has resulted in four of Telstra’s most highly paid executives being shown the door.

They include chief financial officer Warwick Bray, technology head Stephen Elop, wholesale business chief Will Irving and marketing chief Joe Pollard.

Mr Penn has also moved to inject new blood into his executive ranks, hiring outgoing SBS chief Michael Ebeid and an industry veteran most recently employed by a fastgrowing Indian telco.

The changes come after Mr Penn said last month costs would be slashed, with two to four layers of management removed and 8000 staff sacked.

He said yesterday restructuring his executive team would help create a simpler model for selling products and services.

“Ultimately the simplified and streamlined structure will remove duplication, hierarchy and silos across the organisation,” Mr Penn said.

The fired executives are some of the highest paid at Telstra, with Mr Bray last year receiving $2.13 million and Mr Irving getting $2.5 million.

Mr Ebeid will take over Telstra’s “Enterprise” division which offers cloud computing and mobile services to corporate and government clients.

The telco’s new network boss will be Nikos Katinakis who has been working for Indian telco Reliance Jio which has about 215.3 million users. He will join Telstra in October.

Meanwhile, Vicki Brady will continue to lead the consumer and small business division and legal and corporate affairs head Carmel Mulhern will continue in her role.

Telstra’s profits are under pressure as it faces increased competition in the mobile space and challenges from the rollout of the National Broadband Network, which will transform the telco from being a wholesaler of broadband internet services to a retail provider.

Shares in Telstra rose 1.8 per cent yesterday to close at $2.81.