Sprint today announced some changes to their Senior Leadership Team by introducing Tarek Robbiati Chief Financial Officer, Gunther Ottendorfer Chief Operations Officer, Technology, and John Saw Chief Technology Officer. With the addition of Tarek Robbiati as CFO that means current CFO Joseph Euteneuer will be let go. Euteneuer will stay on during the transition period and will then part ways. Chief Executive Officer Marcelo Claure thanked Euteneuer for his services and wished him well. Robbiati and Ottendorfer will report directly to Claure while Saw will report to Ottendorfer.
Claure took over as CEO last year said he was looking to strengthen the leadership team at Sprint to help guide it from a distant competitor to Verizon to a company that means business. Claure took the time to add the people research and recruit some top executives in the telecommunications world who have a history of working with second class companies. Both Ottendorfer and Robbiati will move to Kansas City with their families.
Robbiati will be responsible for turning around the financial aspect of Sprint which had some people questioning their future in the past. Sprint can be a strong player in the mobile market and has improved in the past year but with the right finances they could be a much bigger player in North America. Robbiati is the right person to take over Sprint’s finances with his history of turning around companies and his knowledge of telecommunications engineering.
Ottendorfer comes to Sprint with 25 years of leading Technology teams and comes at a great time for the company. Sprint has taken a major role in developing and deploying its next generation mobile network. With these two additions Sprint has the experience and the leadership to make the changes and the hard decisions that it will need to make to make it even more of a competitor in the mobile market. In another big move the company will combine their network and information technology departments which will all be under Ottendorfer. This will allow Sprint to cut out the red tape of working between departments and will allow Ottendorfer to keep his department focused on expanding their next generation network.