KEY POINTS:
It is Theresa Gattung's last week in the top job at Telecom and news of her replacement is overdue but expected to be announced in the next couple of days.
The exit interviews are already starting to appear - there's an interesting one with her in The Business
today but it's not online yet.
If you haven't read it, this Paul Holmes interview of Gattung from February is also worth checking out. "No regrets" seems to be the theme to the pieces.
The gossip among the journalists scoffing the mini doughnuts and hamburgers at Theresa's going away party on Friday night (okay so it was just me doing the scoffing) had a lot of fun picking which executives in the room would be flushed out with Theresa's departure.
BT executive Paul Reynolds appears still to be the hot pick for the job and any new CEO will no doubt want to make their mark by overhauling the executive. It certainly feels like a more substantial changing of the guard is on the way as some of Theresa's team are certainly perceived as being pretty old school - ie: stuck in pre-unbundling incumbent mode.
The farewell bash at the Auckland Art Gallery was a pretty low-key affair attended by a fairly eclectic bunch of people - from high-flying business people to regulators and even an All Black. Shareholders' Association chairman Bruce Sheppard shocked all by wearing a suit.
Flanked by a fantastic art exhibit that consisted of a fat plastic security guard watching on, bored looking, Chairman Wayne Boyd and general counsel Mark Verbiest told anecdotes of Theresa's reign that were supposed to be funny but weren't. T
heresa then gave a quick speech saying at the end that wherever she goes in the world "I'll always be a proud Kiwi".
That was the only possible clue to her future she gave. While she said to some of us after the speech she is heading to Argentina for a spot of horse-riding, she wouldn't be drawn on her future career plans.
That sign-off line suggests she is lining up a job overseas - there's talk she's already secured a senior position with a large US technology company - possibly Cisco.
It would be good to have another Kiwi executive working at a high level in the US along with the likes of Chris Liddell at Microsoft and Michael Boustridge at EDS.
The question is whether the yanks will be able to understand Theresa's rapid fire delivery mixed with her distinctive accent. She'll certainly raise some eyebrows if she's headed for the Fortune 500.
