The closing of the deal may be a few months off, but the management team that will lead the combined Level 3/tw telecom was announced today. We already knew Larissa Herda wouldn’t be staying on of course, leaving the top slot for Jeff Storey, but two of tw telecom’s top management will be merging in.
John Blount, currently President and COO of tw telecom, will stay on board as the regional president for North America and Asia Pacific. Andrew Crouch had been in that position, but will now shift across the Atlantic and take on the mantle of regional president for EMEA.
Meanwhile, Harold Teets, currently Senior Vice President – Information and Network Technologies at tw telecom, will become the combined company’s Chief Information Officer. He’ll take on the IT side of things presumably, leaving longtime Level 3 CTO Jack Waters with the network side.
Those are two logical additions, given that Level 3’s integration task will be focused on North America and especially on integrating the two IT/backoffice infrastructures without upsetting any apple carts. The rest of Level 3’s team will remain in place, while tw telecom’s other senior executives will hopefully start resurfacing elsewhere over the next few years with new projects to work on.
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Categories: Jobs · Mergers and Acquisitions
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Congrats to John Blount, Andrew Crouch, and Harold Teets. The Zayo team looks forward to working with all of you in your new roles!!
Dan, Are you giving a subtle hint that, eventuality Zayo will merge with Level 3? You would give Level 3 a first class, high quality executive that would work wonders for the team. It would be a toss up who would make the better CEO. Maybe you could become the CEO and Jeff Storey could do what he does best, be the COO.
…CarlK, EVERYONE eventually merges with either Zayo or Level 3! 😉
This is awesome. I now have much confidence in Mr. Storey’s decision making ability and vision of the future. Putting John and Harold in these roles is huge for the culture. The concept of IT being “Business Enablers” changed our world at tw….it will change Level 3’s as well. Well done sir, well done!
Little do people know, but Harold also ran the sales organization for Xspedius on an interim basis… the guy is multi-talented…
But will both still be there in those roles in 9 months? It’s not uncommon to keep execs for the merger transition and dump them just as soon as the dust settles and attention drifts elsewhere.
Chris Ancell comes to immediately to mind as an example of this.
CarlK, there is no toss up. Jeff Storey a tremendous CEO. Keep up the good work Storey!
I think its a little premature to say that. He has been in charge for maybe two years at most? The only claim to fame so far is slash and burn cuts to a razor thin surplus for a couple quarters. It was a trajectory that was already underway before Crowe left. Not saying he’s bad and Crowe was any good – just saying the evidence is pretty light.
Most managers can figure out that formula. Much harder is for leaders to forge a unique path in their industry. Price cuts, quarterly layoffs, growth by acquisition, and clever financial moves does not a thought leader make.
Storey also has a growing reputation for not valuing nor investing in differentiated services or innovative marketing and branding (and he will always be enabled in that strategy by shortsighted investors who don’t get the landscape shift going on). Buying another 20,000 buildings doesn’t inspire confidence that has changed and there is little evidence they can capitalize on TW’s attempt at innovation on a broader scale. If your strategy for telecom in the coming years is lower $/bit, quantity, another new OSS overlay, and more people answering phones, reserve your place in the unemployment line now.
I would say ALL that has happened in 1 1/2 years of Storey leadership was the direction,vision, and leadership of Crowe. Financial manuevers, M&A analysis and subsequent pull the trigger, Enterprise growth etc. All these trends are long timeframe activities , this is a big ship now and turning it is a time event.
STorey definetly streamlined operations , cut some heads, did some internal reorganizations and likely prepped the team for a smoother merger. Frankly from the outside his CEO tenure has changed the sentiment and public perception of Level 3. But to give him the credit for what was a long slow transition from money loser into a free cash flow company I must say didnt happen overnight or in 1 1/2 years