Tom Alexander appointed as Chairman, and executive management team recruited at Viacloud, UK MVNE/A

Spectrum was retained by Stratum, an international Bahrain-headquartered private equity firm, to initially recruit a Chief Executive Officer for Viacloud UK Limited (Viacloud), a London-headquartered mobile service provider with Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) and Mobile Virtual Network Aggregator (MVNA) solutions that enable Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) and leading brands to launch consumer propositions.

The client brief was to recruit a telecoms CEO with a track record of entrepreneurial value creation, resulting in the appointment of Emanuele Angelidis, who was one of Vodafone Italy’s first managerial employees, and who subsequently led quad-play Fastweb from start-up to a €7bn IPO.

The CEO search coincided with a phased search programme to recruit a Chief Commercial Officer who was to have specific UK mobile wholesale experience, and Tim Stone, who, as Director of Business Development & Wholesale led the growth of Vodafone UK’s mobile wholesale operation from £40m to a £200m revenue business unit, was appointed as CCO.

A Chief Financial Officer search was also conducted, the requirement being for a finance executive with both mobile start-up and large corporate experience. Richard Schafer was appointed CFO, having previously been one of the first finance employees at Three UK (3) and, more recently, at Vodafone, where he was Commercial Finance Director Enterprise, a £1.7bn revenue organisation.

Spectrum also recruited Viacloud’s Operations Director, Camilo Castano, the former Head of Information Technology & Security at Millicom International Cellular in Luxembourg, where he had extensive international experience of setting up new mobile operations from a network and technology perspective in multiple countries.

Alongside the recruitment of the executive management team, Stratum attached considerable importance to the constituents of Viacloud’s board, and Spectrum also conducted a search for a Non-Executive Chairman, which resulted in the recruitment of Tom Alexander, the former Chief Executive at Everything Everywhere, and founder and CEO of the world’s first MVNO, Virgin Mobile.

Telecoms.com subsequently described the Viacloud leadership team as “heavy hitters”.

The MVNO segment of the UK mobile market is significant and highly profitable for mobile network operators: in July 2013 Informa calculated that MVNOs in the UK generate £900m to £950m annual revenue for mobile operators, and profits of £400m to £450m, comparing very favourably with their own retail operations, which produce margins close to 25 per cent.

To read Spectrum’s Viacloud Press Release please click here.