HawTel replaces CEO with turnaround specialist

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Posted Tuesday, 5 February 2008, 11:37 HST @859

Hawaiian Telcom CEO Mike Ruley was dismissed yesterday. His replacement is Stephen Cooper, co-founder or Kroll Zolfo Cooper, a New York City-based interim management firm. Cooper is best known as the Enron’s CEO during the company’s bankruptcy. Today’s Star-Bulletin article has a brief biography of Cooper. Kevin Nystrom, a senior director at KZC, will join HawTel as COO.

While Cooper stated in today’s Honolulu Advertiser that HawTel is not a “distressed company”, it’s now clear that the Carlyle Group is unhappy with their acquisition’s performance. HawTel has lost thousands of subscribers to mobile carriers and Time Warner Oceanic’s VoIP services, leading to US$137 million in financial losses since 2006. I mentioned some of the operational issues on my old blog on 16 November 2006, and last week BusinessWeek discussed how market forces have affected the US telecom industry overall.

The Advertiser noted that Ruley put his Kahala home on the market in early January, which is a possible indication that changes were coming at HawTel. The company has eliminated over 100 management positions since October 2007.

Tags: businessweek, business_model, car, ceo, content, cxo, Hawaii, Hawaiian, Hawaiian-Telcom, Honolulu, management, mobile, new-york, ocean, telecom, time, Time-Warner-Cable, USA, VoIP, Wikipedia

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3 responses so far ↓

1 billso // Thursday, 28 February 2008, 09:21 HST @764

This morning’s Honolulu Advertiser reports on Ruley’s buyout package (US$1.3 million plus a $24K monthly consulting fee), and new CEO Stephen Cooper’s $600K monthly consulting fee.
2 billso // Saturday, 1 March 2008, 15:16 HST @011

This morning’s Honolulu Advertiser reports that HawTel CFO Paul Sunu has resigned after only 10 months on the job.
3 billso // Sunday, 18 May 2008, 20:16 HST @178

Eric Yeaman, COO of HECO, has been tapped as HawTel’s new president and CEO. See this Star-Bulletin story for more details.