The telecommunications company Cellnex Telecom announced yesterday to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) the replacement of the non-executive chairman, Bertrand Boudewijn Kan, and his replacement by Anne Bouverot, a board member who had been an independent director of Cellnex since May 2018. and forms part of its audit and risk management committee.
The replacement of Kan – who will continue as a director – was one of the objectives raised by the activist fund The Children’s Investment (TCI), directed by Chris Hohn, which announced last week that it has raised its stake from 7% to 9% of the company, until becoming its first shareholder.
Company spokesmen assured that the handover does not respond to the fund’s request but to Cellnex’s strategic shift, which plans to stop acquisitions in the coming years and focus on organic growth, which favors a profile like Bouverot’s, a prominent director of the telecommunications industry, who held various positions in the Orange group in the US, UK and France; She directed the GSMA, the global association of the mobile phone industry that organizes the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and was CEO of Morpho, a security and identification services company.
Bouverot said in a statement that “since its IPO in 2015, Cellnex has grown to become the first independent operator of telecommunications infrastructure in Europe.” Now, he added, “the company is at the beginning of a new chapter, focused on organic growth and strengthening its balance sheet. The board fully supports this strategy and agrees that finding the right successor to Tobias Martinez (CEO) is a key priority.”
Hohn, when announcing the increase in his stake, criticized that Cellnex “cannot reach its full potential because it suffers from poor corporate governance.” In his opinion, the replacement process for Martínez has been “neglected”, which causes a “loss of confidence” in President Kan, and in members Peter Shore and Alexandra Reich. Hohn asked to replace them with a TCI representative, Jonathan Amouyal, and other “potential advisers.”