Sprint Shakes Up Management  

Sprint announced management changes ahead of their earnings report on August 3, naming a new CFO, COO, and Chief Network Officer. The company announced Chief Financial Officer Joseph Euteneuer will be leaving the company and named Tarek Robbiati as his successor. Robbiati, who will join in late August, stepped down as chief executive of Australian financial services provider FlexiGroup Ltd in June. Günther Ottendorfer is joining as chief operating officer, technology, effective immediately, and John Saw was promoted to chief technology officer. “While we recognize the timing of these changes are not ideal, we believe the company wanted to make these changes all at once (recall it recently made changes at the CMO level),” Jennifer Fritzsche, Senior Analyst at Wells Fargo, wrote. “While we do not know Robbiati, it is interesting to connect the dots from where he came. With leasing representing a bigger part of the mix for Sprint (as well as SoftBank’s ownership of BrightStar), we believe there is a more of a bigger picture strategy here still to unfold…We believe Sprint is taking the important step of now focusing on its future strategy and taking its network (and perhaps leasing model) to the next level.”