The Austrian has been head of Vodafone Germany since October 2015.
(Photo: Reuters)
Dusseldorf Philippe Rogge, who is currently in charge of Microsoft’s Eastern European business, will become the new head of Vodafone Germany. The company announced this on Tuesday afternoon. As of July 1, Rogge will replace the current CEO Hannes Ametsreiter, who has led the British telecommunications group’s national company with the highest sales since October 2015.
Little is known about his successor at the Düsseldorf headquarters. Even some top-class players only found out about the change in the middle of last week. Belgian Rogge has international experience and has worked for Microsoft in Beijing and Lisbon. He gained industry experience at the Belgian telecom provider Proximus. Vodafone colleagues who have already met him describe him as easy-going and down-to-earth. His contract will initially run for three years.
However, the report caused uncertainty and sadness among most employees. Predecessor Ametsreiter was a popular boss internally who was always aggressively looking for publicity. Under him, Vodafone rose to become a fully-fledged telecommunications provider with the acquisition of the television cable networks from Unitymedia in 2019.
The British now had their own landline network almost across Germany. In this way, they managed to repeatedly put the industry leader, Deutsche Telekom, under pressure in its home country. “Hannes turned Vodafone back into growth,” praised Frank Roevekamp, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Vodafone Germany, on Tuesday.
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Recently, however, the British have weakened and fell back to third place behind Telefónica Deutschland (O2) in the important service revenues in mobile communications. Internally, there is said to have been resentment about the centralization rage of the British parent company, which primarily wants to save money with this verticalization strategy. However, she hesitated when it came to investments. Ametsreiter is also said to have criticized this course internally several times, as the Handelsblatt recently reported.
In an emotional post on the LinkedIn social network, Ametsreiter thanked his team on Tuesday. He wanted to switch to the “private equity and investor side,” he wrote. “There I want to get involved in growth areas in the telco and tech sector, to be active as an investor and shareholder.”
More: Lack of fiber optics and problems with 5G expansion: Why Vodafone is falling behind in Germany