Sprint to name Marcelo Claure as CEO

A report published early Wednesday, says that Sprint will name Brightstar founder Marcelo Claure as its new CEO, replacing Dan Hesse. Brightstar is a phone distributor that is majority owned by SoftBank, the company that also owns Sprint. Hesse is apparently being blamed for the continued drop in Sprint customers. In the June quarter, Sprint was the only one of the major four U.S. mobile operators to see the subscriber roll drop, as 245,000 customers left.

Sprint has been in the middle of a long restructuring of its pipeline, which has left black holes in its network. To make matters worse, Hesse took home $49 million last year in salary and bonuses. An $18.7 million bonus was based on his longevity with Sprint, and was not awarded to him for performance. The ousted executive had run Sprint since December 2007.

Claure, 43, has received some attention for his attempt to bring a professional soccer club to Miami, teaming up with David Beckham. His first task at Sprint will be to re-energize a company that is having problems maintaining an identity. Compared to T-Mobile's in your face attitude, Sprint seems laid back. Claure needs to open lines of communication with the public, which is something that T-Mobile CEO John Legere does better than anyone in the industry. Legere would have run a combined Sprint-T-Mobile, according to speculation. Sprint however, has decided not to fight U.S. regulators and has decided to abandon its pursuit of T-Mobile.


source: Bloomberg