(Bloomberg) — Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.’s Australian phone operator Optus has appointed Stephen Rue as CEO starting in November, it said in a stock exchange filing on Monday.
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Rue has been CEO of Australia’s National Broadband Network since 2018. His appointment comes as Singtel moves to a more decentralized structure, according to a statement announcing the move. Michael Venter will remain interim CEO until Rue’s appointment later this year.
Optus Mobile, which is wholly owned by Singtel, last week announced a deal with TPG Telecom to create a multi-operator regional core network. Singtel said about a month ago that there was no imminent deal to sell Optus, following a report that Brookfield was in talks for a 20% stake in Optus, but the parties were unable to agree on terms.
Optus is one of Singtel’s biggest foreign investments, although its recent history has been marred by a widespread outage that forced the resignation of its CEO in November. The outage followed an earlier cyberattack that exposed the personal information of millions of customers.
Rue and the board “will work together to reset strategy and rebuild customer trust in the Optus brand,” the statement said.
(Updates with more information, full context.)
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