CSL to employ a new chief executive next year
CSL New World Mobility, which operates Hong Kong's largest mobile telephone network, will recruit a new head next year after Tarek Robbiati, its chief executive since July 2007, was named group managing director of the newly formed Telstra International.
Robbiati's appointment, which takes effect today, was announced by Telstra Corp chief executive David Thodey yesterday as part of a reorganisation at Australia's largest telecommunications services provider. CSL is a subsidiary of Telstra.
Thodey said Telstra's new international organisation brings together all of the group's assets outside Australia and New Zealand into one business unit for the first time.
'Asia is a very important market for Telstra and the creation of this new unit enables us to take a co-ordinated approach to our performance in one of the world's fast-growing markets,' he said.
Based in Hong Kong, the international unit under Robbiati is responsible for CSL, Telstra's 50 per cent stake in Asia-Pacific submarine cable and satellite systems operator Reach, Telstra's international carrier assets and network interface systems, and all properties in China.
Mainland assets included the internet search and advertising businesses of real estate website SouFun, online car portal Authome, and consumer electronics site PCPop, social media forums Che168.com and IT168.com, and the online media operations of mobile content firm China M and Sharp Point, which provides technical services for China Mobile's wireless handset music platform.
'I will continue to be heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of CSL,' said Robbiati, who will remain at the helm of the operator until June 30 next year.
'The new chief executive will report to me as group managing director of Telstra International,' he added.
David Aitken, the head of regulatory and corporate affairs at CSL, said it was 'too early to tell' how recruitment of a new chief executive would proceed next year.
Robbiati, who was the deputy chief financial officer at Telstra in Australia since November 2005, moved to Hong Kong in July 2007 to replace industry veteran Hubert Ng Ching-wah as CSL's chief executive.
