An extraordinary meeting of shareholders of Ukrtelecom, the largest fixed-line operator, will take place today. The company announced the meeting in early November. The meeting is expected to appoint a new supervisory board and amend its regulations.
As several minority shareholders of Ukrtelecom (SCM owns 92,79% of the shares, the rest are in free float) told Capital, the composition of the supervisory board will be changed. Specifically, a new position will be created: deputy head of the supervisory board. This position will be filled by the current chairman of Ukrtelecom, Oleksandr Barinov.
The previous chairman of the board, Leonid Netudykhata, will retain his position. "However, his influence over the company will be diminished," notes a shareholder familiar with the changes. "Essentially, the functions of managing the supervisory board will be transferred to his deputy," he adds. Barinov will be responsible for developing Ukrtelecom's long-term strategy.
Yesterday, Barinov chose not to comment on the upcoming changes. As Kapital has learned, the position of chairman at Ukrtelecom will be abolished. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Yuriy Kurmaz will effectively lead the company. Furthermore, the responsibilities of CFO Lyubomyr Kotsymbas (who held senior positions at VimpelCom (Russia) and Beeline (Ukraine)) will be expanded. He will assist Kurmaz in his management.
The first reforms
Barinov and Kurmaz assumed the management of Ukrtelecom in February 2014. They came from the mobile operator Astelit (life:)), in which SCM held a minority stake (44%). "Our first task was to form a new organizational structure. We built functional verticals. As strange as it may sound, at Ukrtelecom, for example, there was no technical vertical. That is, the deputy director of technical issues at the Zhytomyr branch did not report to the technical director at the head office in Kyiv," explains Barinov. The new management also eliminated a number of Ukrtelecom directorates (postgraduate education, primary network, etc.) and transitioned from a branch structure to managing the operator across five main macro-regions: southern (Odesa), western (Lviv), central (Kyiv), Dnipro (Dnipropetrovsk), and Kharkiv (east). Two separate regions also emerged: Crimea and the ATO zone.
"Our first task was to create a new organizational structure. We built functional verticals. As strange as it may sound, Ukrtelecom, for example, didn't have a technical vertical."
Barinov has formed a new management team. Dmytro Mykytyuk and Denis Zakharenko joined from life:) and became Technical Director and Commercial Director of Business-to-Business (B2C). HR Director Tatyana Petruk previously worked with HR in the oil industry (TNK-BP, Naftyanaya Industriya Srbije). Mykola Davydenko, formerly of Kyivstar, is responsible for the B2B segment. Oksana Klymenko, responsible for reputation and corporate communications, joined from SCM. A new position of IT Director was created, filled by Anatoliy Vovnyuk, who joined the company from Ukreximbank. Another new area of the company—strategy and business development—is overseen by Oleksiy Davydov, who joined from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
At the same time, Ukrtelecom no longer has any of its old management team. The last of them, Igor Kravets, left the company just recently. From 2011 to 2013, he served as acting chairman of the company's board.
Vector change
SV Consulting President Oleh Stefanyuk predicts that Barinov will be involved in more than just Ukrtelecom's supervisory board. "He will likely eventually move up the ranks and take a position at SCM," he believes.
It's worth noting that Ilya Arkhipov is currently responsible for telecommunications at SCM Group. He heads SCM Advisors Limited, which is based in the UK. Another source adds that, due to the events in the east, Rinat Akhmetov will try to diversify his business and focus more on technology and services. The team will be strengthened for this purpose. In addition to Ukrtelecom and its stake in life:), SCM also owns the second-largest fixed-line operator in the market, Vega.
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