The new Chairman of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, recently outlined his vision for Telefonica’s future.
During his speech, Marc Murtra affirmed that Europe is facing new times. ‘Our opinion is that the high level of fragmentation in the telecommunications sector in Europe, unique in the world, and the excessive regulation, also unique in its intensity, have uprooted the possibility that European telcos could have been technological giants capable of competing with their US and Chinese counterparts, ensuring Europe’s sovereignty and productivity,’ he said.
To overcome this situation, Murtra considers that ‘the time has come for the large European telecommunications companies to consolidate and grow to a scale that will allow them to invest, innovate and attract talent in a decisive way’. And this process of European consolidation, he added, ‘must begin within countries, otherwise it will not make economic sense’. He explained that in this way it will be possible to generate a profitable scale that will allow the deployment of advanced networks, innovation and the attraction of the best professionals, which ‘will create sufficient technological capacity to reinforce our strategic autonomy, increase our productivity and improve the lives of our citizens’.
Our review will be ambitious and it will be carried out with analysis and with strict professionalism.
Given this context of change and based on the premise that ‘Telefónica has enormous potential’, the company’s Chairman has highlighted the five guiding principles that are already shaping the company and has revealed the priorities on which the strategic review to be presented before the end of the year will be based. ‘Our review will be ambitious, it will be carried out with analysis and with strict professionalism’, he said.
These five principles are: changes in Europe, customers at the center of everything, technology and operational excellence as the pillars of Telefónica’s business, the company acting with disciplined industrial logic and the creation of value for customers, employees and shareholders.
Based on these five premises, Telefónica is working on three priorities. The first involves focusing the company’s efforts and knowledge.
Our priority will be Europe, Europe and Europe; we will maintain our leadership position in Brazil as a core market and we will focus on what we know how to do as an industrial operator,’ said the company’s Chairman.
He added: ‘We consider intra-market consolidations to be economically profitable. There will be no European consolidation, nor will we consolidate without prior intra-market consolidation and without economic rationality.’
The second priority is to maintain sound financial discipline and to simplify the company. As for the third, it lies in operating under parameters of technological and operational excellence. ‘And for all this,’ the Chairman of Telefónica emphasized, ‘people will be key.’
Marc Murtra concluded his speech by stating that his objective as president is to ‘make a decisive contribution to enhancing Telefónica’s strengths’. ‘I am firmly committed to working to strategically and energetically push our company to reach its full potential for shareholders, for Telefónica professionals and for Europe as a whole,’ he remarked.
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