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Wednesday, 10 October 2007 |
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Sprint chief ousted on the back of lacklustre stock market performance and a painfully bad merger. And a decline in customers, too.
Gary Forsee is stepping down as ceo of Sprint Nextel. The reasons are not hard to fathom: Sprint is leaking customers, its high-profile big ticket merger with Nextel does not seem to be working, and the share price has flat-lined while about it in the mobile world have gone skywards. Apart from that, he did a good job.
It’s a shame. Forsee is personable enough but news that some 337,000 post-paid customers fled Sprint in Q3’07 just showed how deep the failure to integrate Nextel, a hare-brained convergence play, had hit the business.
“On behalf of the entire board and the Sprint Nextel employees, we want to thank Gary for his dedication and leadership and all of the contributions he has made since becoming chief executive of Sprint in 2003," said a statement.
The ousting came on the same day that Sprint won the latest round in its battle with Vonage over IPR. The settlement is believed to be costing Vonage a cool US$80mn; that’s money Vonage can ill afford to part with (click here).
"We view this settlement and licensing agreement as a validation of the strength and breadth of our patent portfolio," said Harley Ball, Sprint Nextel's vice president of intellectual property. "This is an affirmation of Sprint's research and development and a testament to the rich history of innovation at Sprint Nextel.”
The windfall will not find its way into Forsee’s pocket.
Jim Chalmers
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