Slovak executive Miroslav Majoroš will take over as CEO of the Telekom Romania group of companies from German Nikolai Beckers. The appointment becomes effective on January 1, 2016, according to an announcement of the group.

“Miroslav Majoros, currently the Chief Executive Officer of Slovak Telekom, will take over the Romanian operations' leadership replacing Nikolai Beckers who will pursue new challenges outside Telekom,” reads the official announcement.

Beckers’ departure has been reported by local media in late-November, as his mandate finishes at the end of this year. Nikolai Beckers took charge of German group Deutsche Telekom’s local operations in April 2013, a move which showed that the Germans were more interested in the Romanian market. Up until then, the local operations had been run by Greek managers appointed by OTE, Deutsche Telekom’s Greek subsidiary, which formally controls the two entities in Romania, Telekom Romania Communications (the former Romtelecom) and Telekom Romania Mobile Communications (the former Comsote Romania).

Nikolai Beckers had the difficult task to merge the two entities’ commercial operations while at the same time carry out one of the biggest rebranding campaigns in Romania. In September 2014, Romtelecom and Cosmote disappeared and were replaced by Telekom Romania and the “T” brand’s magenta. The group focused on selling fixed-mobile service bundle packages, which it hadn’t done before.

By September 2015, Telekom Romania reached 160,000 clients for its converged services. However, the group lost mobile and broadband internet clients, and only grew on TV, compared to September 2014, before the rebranding. The group’s revenues in Romania also declined in the first nine months of 2015 compared to the same period of 2014.

Although it is the biggest telecom group in Romania by revenues, Telekom is still somewhat far from the leading mobile carriers Orange and Vodafone while on the broadband internet segment it is behind local operator RCS&RDS.

The group’s new manager will focus on expanding Telekom Romania’s FTTH (Fiber to the Home) and 3G/4G networks, and progress towards the legal merger of the local operations.

Miroslav Majoroš, 56, has held management positions in Slovak Television, IBM Slovakia and, in the last 13 years, in Telekom. Since 2010, he was Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Slovak Telekom. Majoros will remain the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Slovak Telekom.

editor@romania-insider.com