Telia Company names new group CFO and COO
Appointments

Telia Company names new group CFO and COO

Allison Kirkby.jpg

Telia Company has appointed Per Christian Mørland to the position of group CFO, and Dr. Rainer Deutschmann to the position of group COO.

The news follows last month’s divestment from Turkcell, which led to several executive team changes. Confirming that Telia would no longer operate in Turkey, the company said the deal was finalised “in preparation of a renewed Nordics and Baltics strategy”.

Effective August 1, Per Christian Mørland – who has been CFO of Telia Norway since October 2015 –will take on the position of EVP, group CFO of Telia Company, replacing Douglas Lubbe who served as acting CFO.

Back in May, Christian Luiga, who was acting CEO of Telia Company, resigned as group CFO following the appointment of Allison Kirkby to president and CEO.

She commented: “Per Christian and Rainer are further additions to the team that will help me reimagine and restore Telia to a thought leader that outperforms the industry by delivering superior customer experiences and superior business results.”

Mørland brings 16 years of “deep telco experience from within the Nordics” and also from time spent in Asia and Central Europe.

Kirkby said: “I’m proud to announce that Telia Company has found a new permanent CFO from within, in Per Christian Mørland. In addition to his broad geographic and commercial experiences, Per Christian brings deep finance functional and transformation experiences, and has a passion for driving performance management.”

Effective from H2, Dr. Rainer Deutschmann will take on the position of SVP, group COO of Telia Company, replacing Magnus Zetterberg.

Deutschmann is currently Group COO of Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka's largest network operator across mobile, fixed broadband, pay TV and fintech services.

He brings 20 years of experience in telecommunications, cloud and IT services, media and  entertainment, digital marketing and analytics. Before joining Axiata, he was chief product and innovation officer at Reliance Jio and has held senior positions in Deutsche Telekom AG, McKinsey and Rain, South Africa’s first data focused mobile network.

Kirkby said: ““Rainer brings a unique set of skills and experiences having worked and flourished, in both large scale incumbents, in the form of Deutsche Telekom, and high growth, agile, challengers, in the form of Dialog Axiata and Reliance Jio.

“He is a strong technologist with a breadth of operational, strategy and digital transformation experiences, and played a fundamental role in launching the world’s largest and fastest growing green-field 4G, fibre and digital services provider at Reliance Jio. More recently, he has led the group wide digital transformation of Dialog Axiata.”

Gift this article