KPN poaches Proximus CEO

Dominique Leroy has played Benelux musical chairs by moving from Belgian Proximus to become Dutch KPN’s new CEO.

The CEO vacancy at KPN was created by the sudden departure of Maximo Ibarra earlier this year for family reasons, which coincided with a major outage for which KPN was culpable. Leroy has been CEO of Proximus for five years but her new salary of around a million euros a year was presumably a factor in convincing her to seek new challenges.

“We are very pleased to appoint Dominique Leroy as the new CEO of KPN,” said Duco Sickinghe, KPN Chairman. “Dominique is a dynamic, customer-focused and engaging leader with a wealth of experience in the telecommunications industry. With her strong strategic, operational and communication skills, we are convinced that Dominique will be able to successfully execute on KPN’s strategy.”

“At the end of last year KPN unveiled its 2019 – 2021 strategy, prioritising sustainable growth in the medium term. Good progress has been made to date, driven by our dedicated Board of Management and Executive management team, and executed by our colleagues throughout the firm. With Dominique at the helm, the Supervisory Board is confident that we will see further progress in the delivery of KPN’s strategy, positioning KPN for further success in the years to come. Continuing to execute against that strategy will remain KPN’s focus.”

“I am very excited to be nominated as the next CEO of KPN,” said Leroy (pictured). “KPN has a high-quality reputation and an excellent leadership team. I am looking forward to working with them and the wider KPN team to execute on the existing strategy and help KPN to become a premier digital services and communication provider with the customer at its heart.”

Ibarra’s resignation was due to complete on 30 September but Leroy isn’t available until 1 December. It looks like COO Joost Farwerck is going to be super-sub CEO for October and November, but since the board doesn’t seem to have been able to come up with any strategy beyond the basic default for any company, that shouldn’t be too tricky.