Netway boss resigns on eve of restructuring

Netway managing director Richard Taylor has thrown a spanner in the works of the Telecom subsidiary's restructuring by resigning from the company. The abrupt departure comes only a week after the approval of a plan which will see part of Netway's business reabsorbed into Telecom.

Netway managing director Richard Taylor has thrown a spanner in the works of the Telecom subsidiary’s restructuring by resigning from the company.

Just a week before, Telecom corporate general manager Peter Thompson had approved a new direction for the subsidiary, defined largely by Taylor and Netway senior management. Then Taylor resigned on Wednesday, to become CEO of Leigh Mardon, a specialist printing company.

“If I look at my experience, it’s about smaller organisations with rapid growth. My involvement with Datacom, then Netway, signalled that,” Taylor says.

“Netway has become very successful. Looking forward, we’ve positioned it to take advantage of convergence opportunities.

One of the first things Thompson did when he took up his role at Telecom late last year was look at Netway, which was servicing 40 of the top 720 customers Thompson is responsible for.

Netway is a $100m company, providing value-added services such as frame relay and Pacnet, and growing at 30%-plus a year.

Thompson rapidly came to the conclusion that Netway should be servicing the full 720 customers.

“Next year we plan to migrate all these services into Telecom, leaving Netway to focus on customer network management, network applications and professional services,” he says.

Thompson says the management team at Netway will stay intact and that some sales staff will transfer to Telecom corporate. Thompson estimates at this state — the changeover won’t take place till April 1 — that around 50 will move across, leaving a staff of 170, including a number of sales specialists.

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