Paul McIntyre: Fixer-builder for Telstra

Finally, Australia's A$60 billion ($84 billion) telecoms giant has a new boss to steer it through the federal government's sell-off of its remaining A$30 billion stake sometime next year.

After six months, Telstra's new chief executive is a trumpet-playing, American-born Hispanic who headed one of the so-called US telco "baby bells".

Solomon Trujillo's elevation to the top job came on Thursday, the same day news broke that the 14-year boss at the Commonwealth Bank, David Murray, is set to announce his retirement formally in the next week. Murray, ironically, was long considered a frontrunner for the top Telstra job because of his success in taking the Commonwealth from public to private ownership in the early 1990s.

As it turns out, Murray was never a candidate and Telstra chairman Donald McGauchie revealed Trujillo's appointment was the first and unanimous choice of the board.

One of the few slights on Trujillo's career was running Graviton, a high tech start-up in wireless sensor networks which was part backed by the venture capital arm of the CIA. It failed and was taken over.

But before and after that little venture between 2000 and 2002, Solomon Trujillo (pronounced Troo-hee-hoe) boasts some serious credentials running telecommunications companies in North America and France.

And he should do, given Telstra has agreed to a A$1.5 million "sign-on bonus", a A$3 million base salary, A$3 million in short-term incentives and A$4 million from a long-term incentive plan.

Trujillo, mind you, is already a rich man. When he was chairman and chief executive of US West, he received a US$66.5 million golden parachute from a voluntary exit after his company merged with rival Qwest in 2000.

In 2003 he headed France Telecom's mobile phone division, Orange, before the public utility decided to integrate it back into the main business.

He is also on the board of the world's second biggest softdrinks producer, Pepsi-Co, the second largest discount department store in the US, Target, services firm EDS and North America's biggest newspaper publisher, Gannet, which boasts 100 daily newspapers including flagship USA Today. All bar one will go when he takes over on July 1.

So what does Trujillo bring to Telstra? Well, he arrives in Australia today for a whirlwind visit - Telstra's announcement on Thursday happened only because news of the appointment started to leak. But interviews he's given in the US in recent years paint a picture of a straight-shooting boss who doesn't mind plenty of cost-cutting and some business future scoping.

Costs are on Telstra's agenda in the lead-up to the federal government's final 51.8 per cent stake being offered to investors - analysts expect between A$1.4 billion and A$2 billion to go.

Trujillo, however, has repeatedly said he's obsessed with customers. "I have been a fixer and a builder in my years at US West," said the telco veteran who regularly lives on four hours' sleep a night. "If you were to ask me what are my top priorities, No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, they are service, service, and service. There's hardly a day goes by that I am not doing something with a customer. That's how I stay in tune. There's nothing more strategic than listening to your customers."

Interestingly though, before the merger with Qwest, US West's nickname was "US Worst" after continuing criticism of the group cutting corners in infrastructure maintenance.

Still, the initial market reaction is generally positive, although Telstra's share price slipped 1Ac after the announcement. Analysts are now doing their background research on the new guy.

Telstra's chairman, Donald McGauchie, unsurprisingly, was full of praise. "He was the unanimous choice of the board and the first choice of the board," he said.

"Mr Trujillo has successfully led a number of major cultural and business change programmes. He has shown a capacity to drive cultural change and that cultural change will be in the direction of a service-driven, customer focused business."

McGauchie's "first choice" comments led to media questioning about the future of Telstra's internal candidates for the top job - chief financial officer John Stanhope and consumer and marketing boss David Moffatt.

"That will be matters for them and for Sol," he said, before elaborating on broader problems in Australian companies with succession management.

"We have some very competent executives in Telstra and I am sure that we will see those people assist to drive this business forward. I don't think we have good succession planning in this country, particularly in this company. One of the challenges we will put in front of Sol will be to make sure that he puts a successor in place."

* Paul McIntyre is a Sydney journalist.