Thursday, October 20, 2005

More Thoughts on Bell's Hiring of George Cope

This story got more headlines today, as the media is starting to recognize the impact of this move. Telus clearly loses a key executive who has been driving their most important growth business, and Bell gains top talent to make their mobile business more successful. It's hard to see this as being anything but a coup for Bell. We've only got 2 major carriers here, and moves like this put just a bit more distance between them. The onus really falls on Telus now to replace him, and it comes just after they've settled their strike. Nothing seems to be easy when you're #2 around here, does it?

A good colleague of mine here in Toronto, Ash Chopra, posted some keen insight on the situation to his blog yesterday. Ash has first hand experience working at both Bell and Telus, and adds more of an insider's view to what it all means. Ash posted a comment about this to my posting yesterday, but I wanted to make sure everyone gets to see it - it's a good read. Thanks Ash!

2 comments:

Jon Arnold said...

Posted by: Jim Courtney

Jon, What exactly is George Cope's role at Bell? Implicit from a Globe and Mail article this morning is that "... as president he will be responsible for both the residential and business units. He won't oversee wireless because of an employment agreement with Telus."

Seems like Bell has had a little more foresight than Nortel when it comes to hiring a competitor's ex-executives where it seems like Motorola wants to have some say in the hiring of Nortel's new CEO.

And that George Cope is not being hired as the solution to address the Bell Mobility issues but rather to bring operations expertise.

Jon Arnold said...

Posted by: John Hansen

Jon,

Am I alone in thinking that the move of George Cope to Bell is indeed a coup for Bell in more ways than one. This has to be a tremendous blow to TELUS who have not only lost an excellent executive from it's most profitable business unit but an executive that has taken with him the TELUS wireless business strategy for, at the very least, the next year. If I was Darren Entwhistle I would not be comfortable with that knowledge