KEY POINTS:
Two new executives hired by Telecom chief Paul Reynolds will complete his top-table team managing the country's biggest publicly listed company.
A former managing director for Tiger beer in Europe - New Zealander Alan Gourdie - is to be chief executive of retail that will see him the public face of Telecom for consumers.
A telecommunications sector heavy hitter - Cable & Wireless International group chief technology officer Frank Mount - has been appointed group chief transformation officer.
Mount joins Telecom after 20 years at AT&T and having worked for Viatel, MCI and T-Mobile in the UK
His job will be to oversee upheavals at the company which include forecasts for profit declines over three years.
Yesterday's appointments complete Reynolds' makeover of the Telecom top table.
It still includes a few old faces such as human relations boss Trisha McEwan. Another notable face from the old days is Mark Ratcliffe, the head of networks division Chorus who lost the other half of his old role for wholesale in the Government-ordered restructuring of the firm.
The wholesale division - selling capacity to Telecom's competitors and headed by Matt Crockett - is at the coalface of Telecom's makeover as it deals with Telecom competitors.
But the retail chief executive appointment fills a glaring gap in the new management structure.
Some have questioned Reynolds' claims the new Telecom will adopt a new focus on customers (where has it been focused in the past?) - but even former critics say there has been fundamental change since Paul Reynolds took over the $7.22 billion company nine months ago.
Reynolds said of his new team yesterday:
"There is a great blend of new faces in the Telecom leadership team. Some are Telecom's most capable rising stars - others are new hires who collectively bring to Telecom international expertise and perspectives in marketing, branding, finance, technology and transformation."
The Gourdie role will have the greatest public profile.
New regulation means increasing competition from Vodafone, TelstraClear and a new mobile brand led by New Zealand Communications, and that means more pressure on the Telecom brand.
Announcing disappointing first quarter results at the start of 2008, the former acting chief operating officer Simon Moutter insisted the Telecom brand would propel sales in areas like mobile phones where Telecom has lost a perilous amount of market share due to delays adopting new 3G technology.
But is the Telecom brand as strong as Moutter believes?
Gourdie comes to Telecom from a background in beer with Asia Pacific Breweries after working less than a year as UK and Europe managing director for Tiger Beer after heading the Singapore business where he has been general manager since 2004.
What does Gourdie - a returning New Zealander who worked with DB Breweries - think of the Telecom brand?
"It holds a special place for New Zealanders. But it really needs to continually deliver as a brand that is about future communications up to world class standards. It needs constant reinvigoration.
"It can grow by its roots but Telecom has to be about the sort of technology further down the track."
Gourdie acknowledged increased competition with Vodafone's aggressive stance expanding from dominance in mobile and pushing into fixed line.
"Differentiating brands has a lot to do with how you layer emotional appeal and I'm very confident that it will win customers," he said.
Gourdie starts on August 25. Meantime, the swift appointment of Mount as group chief transformation officer raises questions about the departure of Moutter, who resigned on May 14 for a new role as chief executive of Auckland International Airport.
Moutter joined Telecom in 1999 and was known as an aggressive player in the Theresa Gattung era, so many in the industry viewed him as an odd appointment transforming the company into The New Telecom.
Mount confirmed that his contract with Telecom was for a set term - believed to be three years.
"I think I have lived with that for at least the past 20 years - dealing with companies going through change. That started in the mid 1980s with the break-up of American dominant telco AT&T.
"Other telcos such as Deutsche Telecom and British Telecom had followed and it is now occurring with Telecom New Zealand."
New Zealand was not unique having a dominant telco facing change, but Mount said the degree of change for Telecom - such as regulations, local loop unbundling and cabinetisation - was greater than telcos in other first world countries.
"It is a difficult road," he said. Mount starts on June 9.
Others sitting at Reynolds' top table include Crockett, a personable former management consultant who was shifted from a lower rung.
The head of the information and computer technology arm Gen-i - Chris Quin - was catapulted up to the top table.
Elsewhere, a former colleague of Reynolds from his former job at BT, Russ Houlden, has taken over as chief financial officer from Mark Bogoievski who left in September last year to join Infratil.
Another Telecom executive recently moved to the top table was the head of strategy Rod Snodgrass.
* John Drinnan is the Herald's telecommunications reporter
