Verizon Names Dan Schulman to Succeed Vestberg as CEO

Watch Verizon Names Dan Schulman to Succeed Vestberg as CEO - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00That announcement coming in the early hours of this morning. Why the change? What's going on there?

00:05So my sense is that Verizon is looking for answers for its growth problem.

00:11They really have trailed AT&T and Verizon for several quarters, actually a couple of years now.

00:18And, you know, they've thrown a they've made a lot of moves, taken a lot of action to try and course correct here

00:25and go from share donor to share gainer in that postpaid wireless business, the contract business.

00:31And it just hasn't worked. And I think they're looking for change here.

00:36And so they named the the board, the head of the board, Dan Schulman, to be CEO.

00:43And Dan has a background as CEO of Virgin Mobile. He also worked at AT&T for almost 20 years.

00:49So, you know, the thought hopefully here is that Dan brings in a fresh perspective.

00:56Yeah, but shares are off this morning, John. Is that just a factor of changes to come?

01:00Or is there something behind it that investors are less enthused that this can be a welcome change?

01:05I think the big surprise to the street was the fact that Sam Path, who's head of the consumer unit

01:11and who was being groomed for the CEO spot here for a couple of years now, didn't get named CEO.

01:18I was really shocked at this news. I thought Sam Path would be named CEO somewhere in the next six months here.

01:26He's a young guy. He brings great energy to the consumer group.

01:30But again, they really all the actions they've taken have yet to work to really turn around growth there.

01:37And I think the board looked at it and said, you know, he's a dynamic personality,

01:43but the report card is still not great here. So let's try bringing in someone who has outside perspective.

01:51And I note one thing, by the way, Shulman has executive experience at American Express and PayPal.

01:58And so my sense is Verizon may begin to test some adjacent markets like consumer finance

02:05as a way of jumpstarting growth here in coming years.