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It seems like miracle that company actually survived. Was it bailed out at any point or they managed to make it through that cleanly?
by tlear 7y ago
It seems like miracle that company actually survived. Was it bailed out at any point or they managed to make it through that cleanly?
- laurentl 7y agoNo bail-out, but a lot of tough decisions. Selling assets or subsidiaries in some countries, building JVs with erstwhile competitors (EE in the UK, a purchasing JV with Deutsch Telekom, etc). A lot of cost-cutting (Lombard’s number 2 at that time was Louis-Pierre Wenes, whose initials stood everywhere in the company for “Lowest Price Wins”). Almost no hires for more than a decade. In 15 years, the company went from 200k employees to about 100k (I don’t have the exact figures), mostly through not replacing people leaving or retiring. This is coming back to bite FT, as they don’t know how they will replace the ageing workforce who manages the telephone infrastructure: schools don’t teach those techs anymore, it takes time to hire and train apprentices, and most of the ops teams will be retired in the next 5 years (these were the guys and girls hired in 1980 to build the network)