(Bloomberg) — Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.’s Australian telco Optus has named Stephen Rue as chief executive officer effective from November, it announced in a stock exchange filing Monday.
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Rue has been CEO of Australia’s National Broadband Network since 2018. His appointment comes as Singtel moves towards a more decentralized structure, according to a statement announcing the move. Michael Venter will remain interim CEO until Rue is appointed later this year.
Singtel-owned Optus Mobile last week announced an agreement with TPG Telecom to create a multi-operator regional core network. Singtel said about a month ago that there was no imminent deal to sell Optus, after a report that Brookfield was in talks for a 20% stake in Optus but the parties had not reached agreement to agree on the conditions.
Optus is one of Singtel’s biggest overseas investments, although its recent history has been marked by a widespread outage that forced the resignation of its CEO in November. This disruption followed an earlier cyberattack that exposed the personal information of millions of customers.
Rue and the board “will work together to reset the strategy and restore customer confidence in the Optus brand,” the statement said.
(Updated with additional information, context throughout.)
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