American telecom major Sprint, owned by SoftBank, has appointed Marcelo Claure as its next president and chief executive officer, replacing Dan Hesse, who spent seven years with the company.
Claure, 43, joined the Sprint Board of Directors in January and is the founder and CEO of Brightstar, a subsidiary of SoftBank.
Also read: Sprint CEO Dan Hesse to step down?
As president and CEO, Claure’s priority will be to build out of Sprint’s network by leveraging its spectrum holdings as well as ensuring that Sprint always maintains competitive offers in the marketplace.
Sprint is facing tough challenges in the American telecom market because its ambition to bring T-Mobile US to its fold is unlikely to happen soon. Competing with AT&T and Verizon Wireless continue to be a major threat for Sprint.
SoftBank-owned Sprint is trying to rely on the young Claure to revive the business.
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When SoftBank paid about $22 billion for control of Sprint about a year ago, Chairman Masayoshi Son pledged to upgrade its network to compete with rivals Verizon Communications and AT&T, according to a report in Bloomberg.
Since then T-Mobile, which is controlled by Deutsche Telekom, has won customers with price cuts and phone financing offers to accelerate growth in users. That has increased the pressure on Sprint, which lost 245,000 monthly subscribers in the quarter that ended in June, while all three other carriers added users. Sprint still managed to post its first quarterly profit in more than six years.
Claure, an entrepreneur CEO
Since founding Brightstar in 1997, Claure has grown the company from a small Miami-based distributor into a global business, with $10.5 billion in gross revenue for the year ended in 2013.
“Marcelo is a successful entrepreneur who transformed a start-up into a global telecommunications company. He has the management experience, passion and drive to create the strongest network and offer the best products and services in the wireless industry,” said Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son.
Claure will resign his position at Brightstar effective August 11 and SoftBank announced it would acquire Claure’s remaining interest in the company.
Dan Hesse joined Sprint as president and CEO in December 2007 and led the telecom company through a series of acquisitions, including the merger with SoftBank, and a multi-year overhaul of its nationwide network, including the shutdown of the Nextel network.
Pix source: hispanicbusiness
