So will these men REALLY defend titan?

BT’S two top bosses oversaw multi-billion pound sales of their last businesses.

Chairman Jan du Plessis, above left, was previously chairman of South Africarooted brewing and beverage giant SAB Miller, which was sold to rival AB Inbev, while chief executive Philip Jansen, above right, was boss of payments giant Worldpay before it was sold to competitor Vantiv.

The pair have vowed to turn BT around and return it to its roots as a ‘national champion’ of infrastructure. But they may now have to fight off takeover bids for the telecoms giant after its market value crashed to just over £10bn – down from £49bn in 2016.

Du Plessis – BT chairman since 2017 – is a chartered accountant who was chairman of SABMiller when it was bought by AB Inbev for £79bn in 2016 – one of the largest takeovers in history.

The 66-year-old later confessed he found it hard to sell the company, which was from his home country and boasted a century-long history. Jansen, 53, is the multimillionaire former boss of Worldpay, who took over from Gavin Patterson in February 2019.

The father-of-five led the payment processing firm, owned at the time by private equity, through its 2015 listing and sale to US-based Vantiv in 2017 for £9bn.

He made about £30m from that deal and defended the large sum, insisting the money ‘is not important to me’ because he had already made a fortune from floating the company on the London Stock Exchange in 2015.