A shake-up of Wind Mobile’s board has resulted in the founder of rival carrier Public Mobile taking the chief executive officer position at the Toronto-based mobile firm.
Wind Announced today that Alek Krstajic, will become CEO of the company. He takes over from Pietro Cordova, who was named interim CEO of the company in 2014 when Wind founder Tony Lacavera relinquished his CEO post but retained the chairmanship of the company’s board of directors
Lacavera now exits from the day-to-day operations of Wind but remains as its honourary chairman. Robert MacLellan, current chairman of the board at Yellow Pages Ltd. and non-executive chair of Northleaf Capital Partners will become chairman of the board of Wind.
David R. Carey, executive vice president for corporate services of T-Mobile U.S., and Hamid Akhavan, principal, Telecom Ventures LLC, have also been elected to Wind Mobile’s board of directors.
“We are very happy to welcome Alek as our new CEO. His strong operating history will further strengthen Wind as the company solidifies its place in the Canadian wireless landscape,” said Lacavera. “Now, with new leadership and well over 800,000 happy customers, we begin an exciting new growth phase.”
He said Wind is now in a position for an LTE rollout under Krstaijic’s leadership.
A statement from the company said that Cordova has “completed his work” as Wind has “transitioned away from the VimpelCom group.” Cordova will now return to Vimpelcom.
“He has brought a steady and consistent hand to Wind, helping the company to continue growing during the very difficult period of the protracted Vimpelcom exit from its investment,” said Lacavera.
Before working with Public Mobile, Krstajic was president of Bell Mobility and was a senior vice-president in the cable division of Rogers Communications Inc.
He praised Cordova for managing Wind through a difficult period and said he does not see any need for sweeping changes at the company at this time.
He said he doesn’t see a need to make sweeping changes to Wind at this time and said Cordova had done a good job managing the company through a difficult two-year period.
