Dr Paul Reynolds will be the new boss of Telecom, after spending almost half his life working for BT. Photo / BT
Dr Paul Reynolds will be the new boss of Telecom, after spending almost half his life working for BT. Photo / BT
KEY POINTS:
A little web trawling turns up plenty of interesting tidbits on the man who will lead the country's largest listed company - here are some of them:
* Dr Paul Reynolds has worked almost half his life for British Telecom, joining in 1983 straight out of Strathclyde University wherehe studied economics and geography. Theresa thought she was old school putting in 13 years at Telecom, she's got nothing on him!
* On BT's board since 2001 under chairman Christopher Bland and has headed BT Wholesale since 2000.
* Has a BA from Strathclyde and a PhD in geology from London University.
* He's a non-executive director of Japanese DSL broadband access provider E-Access.
* According to Forbes.com, Dr Reynolds earnt just over a million pounds in the year to March 2007. That's similar to Theresa Gattung's salary of around $NZ3 million.
* According to this document published in June, Reynolds is well endowed with BT shares and options - nearly 1.1 million shares in personal, deferred bonus, retention and incentive share schemes.
With BT trading at 322.5p last night, that would value his shares at around 3.5 million pounds ($NZ9.1 million). But he also has options over a further 787,000 shares.
* Reynolds has faced much of the same type of criticism Theresa did when it comes to broadband as this article shows.
* He'll add a gentle Scottish lilt to the Telecom boardroom discussion as this video interview illustrates. But he talks much more slowly than Theresa.
* In 2001, Dr Reynolds was tipped as a possible candidate to take over from Sir Peter Bonfield as the head of BT.
* He may miss the view from his London office which overlooks the impressive St Paul's Cathedral. Likely to be based in Auckland, he'll instead have our collection of shoe-box apartments to look out over.
