Jan du Pessis's arrival as chairman of BT Group plc is likely to be the catalyst for a shake-up of management believes Australian bank Macquarie.
“The impending change of Chairman could be a catalyst for further management changes – the reshuffles so far at BT have been at lower management levels,” said analyst Guy Peddy.
Former Rio Tinto chairman du Plessis takes over the chair from Sir Michael Rake in November.
During his eight years at the mining titan he restructured the balance sheet and helped see of a takeover attempt from Glencore.
He will have plenty to do at BT, which is still reeling from the fraud at its Italian operation and battles with the UK telecoms regulator over broadband network Openreach,
A trading update is due Friday and good trends for mobile network EE and its business division should be among the highlights, according to Macquarie.
BT Group PLC is still one of its top picks among the European telecoms sector, with Friday’s first quarter likely to contain a restructuring of the trouble global services arm that contains Italy.
Macquarie has a 340p target price for BT and ‘outperform’ rating.
Shares rose 1.4p to 307p.