Michel Combes, the former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent and Altice, is joining US operator Sprint as president and CFO. He starts at Sprint 06 January and will report to CEO Marcelo Claure. Sprint said Combes will also join the board of directors later.
Combes left Altice last November in a major management reshuffle. He served a little over a year as Altice CEO, after first joining the company in 2015 as COO. This coincided with Altice's entry on the US market, with the takeovers of Suddenlink and Cablevision. For a time, Combes was also CEO of French operator SFR, owned by Altice. Prior to that, he led the turnaround at Alcatel-Lucent and its eventual takeover by Nokia.
Combes has also served as CEO of Vodafone Europe and CEO of TDF, the French tower company. In addition, he was as an advisor to the mobile distributor Brightstar, the company founded by Claure, to support its global expansion.
The new CFO replaces Tarek Robbiati, who will leave Sprint at the end of January after 2.5 years in the job. Robbiati has overseen a substantial improvement in Sprint's finances following its takeover by Softbank, and it will be up to Combes to build on this and lead the return to growth at Sprint, after the company failed to agree a merger with T-Mobile.
Sprint said Combes will "support Claure and the senior leadership team as the company enters a new phase of transformation to deliver profitable growth". He will be responsible for leading the company's financial operations, strategy and "continued cost transformation".
