Altice on Monday announced the appointment of outgoing Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes as its new chief operating officer.
The executive will also become chairman of the board of Altice’s flagship telecoms operation Numericable-SFR.
Combes’ future has been the subject of speculation for some time. When Nokia announced its €15.6 billion takeover of Alcatel-Lucent in April it made it clear that Combes would not remain with the company after the merger and there has been speculation in the local press since then that Altice would be his next port of call.
Last month Alcatel-Lucent confirmed that Combes would leave his post on 1 September, but it did not divulge his destination.
In a statement on Monday, Altice chief executive Dexter Goei described Combes as "one of the most experienced and knowledgeable executives in the global telecom industry."
In addition to spending the past two and a half years at the helm of Alcatel-Lucent, Combes served as CEO of Vodafone Europe for four years and held a number of roles at Orange, including that of CFO.
He left Vodafone in mid-2012 to become CEO of SFR, but ended up not taking on that position after a change of leadership at the French mobile operator’s then parent company Vivendi. But with Altice having completed the acquisition of Numericable-SFR, as it is now known, from Vivendi earlier this year, Combes finds himself revisiting that career move.
"His deep experience in the international telecom sector will help significantly reinforce our ability to successfully operate and integrate all of our affiliates and to continue to grow our footprint in new territories," Goei said.
Combes himself said he is happy to be joining Altice.
"Altice’s long-term strategy and global ambitions are the right challenge for me in this dynamic era of consolidation, convergence and technological disruption," he said.
