Sprint hires ex-Altice chief Combes as president and CFO

US mobile telecom operator Sprint has hired former Altice chairman and CEO Michel Combes as president and chief financial officer.

Michel Combes

Combes will take up his post from tomorrow and will report to CEO Marcelo Claure. He will be appointed to Sprint’s board at a later date.

According to Sprint, Combes will be responsible for leading the company’s financial operations, strategy and continued cost transformation.

Sprint’s current CFO Tarek Robbiati will leave the company on January 31

“Michel is an extremely capable and accomplished global telecom and cable industry leader and I know bringing him on board will help to accelerate our progress as Sprint begins the next chapter of our transformation. He is a visionary executive with a proven track record of successfully transforming leading telecom and media companies and will help us to execute our strategic plan and strengthen our team,” said Claure.

“I have known Marcelo for many years and am delighted to join the Sprint team and build upon the great progress achieved to date. This is an exciting challenge and unique opportunity to help lead a distinguished company through an historic turnaround and its most exciting period yet,” said Combes.

Sprint highlighted Combes achievements in turning around Alcatel-Lucent as CEO from 2013, and his role in helping turn around France Telecom as CFO before that.

Combes resigned from Altice in November last year following the company’s disastrous share-price collapse after worse-than-expected Q3 financials. Altice founder Patrick Drahi then stepped in to take over as president of the board of Altice, while Altice USA chief Dexter Goei took the role of CEO of Altice overall and CFO Dennis Okhuijsen was named as CEO of Altice Europe.