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By Ron Coates, 23 April 2004 16:55

NEWS Colt has poached BT's COO for global operations and president of Europe, Jean-Yves Charlier, to be its new president and CEO.

Job done, incumbent Steve Akins is to return early to Fidelity International, the world's largest independent fund manager based in the US. Charlier himself is actually to become an employee of Fidelity, which owns 55 per cent of Colt, and to be seconded to Colt for at least five years.

"He's a smart man," said Mike Cansfield, research director of Ovum. "He has to be given credit for a remarkable turnaround at BT Global. Historically it has never made money but it now does.

"Akins has put Colt in order again, brought it back from the brink. Charlier will have much the same job as he did at BT Global, except that Colt is farther down the track at integrating than BT was."

Charlier once ran BT's European operations as an entity in its own right but BT's strategy has changed. He has moved to Fidelity because, from his point of view, there were further opportunities in that organisation, according to a Colt spokesman.

BT has itself gone poaching to bring in Francois Barrault as president of BT Inernational and to be in charge of BT's international sales and marketing. He comes from telecoms equipment maker Lucent, where he was president of Lucent Mobility International, having previously been president and CEO of Lucent EMEA.

And the UK's own telco has also lifted Roel Louwhoff to be president of customer services for BT Global. He comes from contact-centre outsourcer ClientLogic Corporation, where he was COO for international operations.