Richard Moat is understood to be announced as the new UK managing director of T-Mobile, Mobiletoday believes.
Moat, a Briton, would join from Orange Romania, where he has been CEO since September 2004, but has also had CEO roles for Orange in Thailand and Denmark.
Moat’s appointment at T-Mobile would mark the end of a 17-year career at Orange, where he gained prominence internally after managing to introduce financial stability at the helm of the volatile Danish market.
Moat is understood to have been a former colleague of T-Mobile’s financial director and acting boss, Lars Nordmark, since former UK managing director Jim Hyde left.
Nordmark and Moat had worked together at Orange Denmark. Nordmark was brought into the UK in 2007 from T-Mobile’s Austrian business, replacing Johnnes Schmidt-Shultes.
Moat’s background as a corporate finance director at Orange, is believed to have been attractive to T-Mobile’s board in Germany, who were looking for tight financial management of the UK business. Moat is also credited with being one of the individuals to have created and developed the Orange brand in the late 1990s.
Most recently though, a source close to Moat points out that his biggest challenge has been battling with Vodafone in Romania, where Orange is reckoned to be in the ascendancy and claimed a year ago to have racked up 10 million customers.
The appointment is being kept under wraps internally, with even heads of department and directors kept in the dark about the identity of the new UK managing director.
Hyde departed the UK business last week to return to his native USA, to take the president and COO role of Ntelos, a regional operator.
Moat will work alongside Nordmark, sales and service director, Gordon Ballantyne and technology chief, Emin Gurdenli. The company is still also looking for a marketing chief to replace Phil Chapman who left in October 2008.
T-Mobile would not confirm Moat as the new managing director, stating a new appointment would be made in due course.