Wind Tre, the new Italian operator emerging from the 50-50 joint venture between Veon's Wind and CK Hutchison's 3 Italia, has announced the appointment of Jeffrey Hedberg as its new CEO, replacing Maximo Ibarra, who has been leading the new entity since January 2017. In a joint statement, Veon and CK Hutchison said Hedberg had been appointed to lead the company through the next phase of its integration and to drive its ambition to build the most innovative converged player in the Italian market, with the country’s largest 4G network.
Hedberg was previously CEO of Veon's Pakistan subsidiary Mobilink, until its recent merger with Warid Telecom. Prior to that he worked at Telkom South Africa, Multi-Links Nigeria, Cell C, Deutsche Telekom and Swisscom.
Former Wind CEO Maximo Ibarra, who steered Wind Tre through the merger and the first few months of integration, is expected to leave the company to pursue new opportunities. The merger of 3 Italia and Wind, one of the largest in Italy since 2007, led to the creation of the biggest Italian mobile operator in terms of mobile SIMs, according to Telecompaper figures. Last month it reported revenues of EUR 1.55 billion in the first three months of 2017, up 2.1 percent year on year.
