Captain Verwaayen takes the bridge of Starship BT

NEWS New BT chief executive Ben Verwaayen assumes his duties at the helm of BT today, to begin the difficult process of turning the company around. Verwaayen has been working with BT since 14 January, a spokesman said. He's spent the past three weeks touring BT installations around the country, meeting key corporate clients, the regulator Oftel, and some 4,000 BT staff. He will spend his first days at the helm working on strategy, and the first results will be seen by the end of February or early March. The new BT strategy "won't be rocket science", according to a spokeswoman. In fact, many analysts expect BT to continue its strategy of off-loading non-core businesses. Since Sir Christopher Bland took over, the company has offloaded stakes in Japanese and Spanish mobile networks, sold its directories division Yell and spun off its own mobile operation as mmO2. This has helped the company cut its debt mountain to around $23bn, but the share price is still languishing - not least because investors tend to be wary of uncertainty. That's one thing BT certainly has plenty of. In particular, speculation is rife about the future of BT's local copper access network, which was the subject of two multi-billion pound bids last year. There's also some concern about how Verwaayen's vision will fit in with the aspirations of chairman Sir Christopher Bland. Earlier this year ex-BBC chairman Bland made some comments to the Sunday Times about BT's possible future as a broadcaster. These were construed as an attempt to set the agenda for BT before Verwaayen, a career telecoms man, arrived and set his own stamp on the company.