Sprint Nextel has been sailing the telecom seas without a captain for close to two months now. But that's finally about to change. According to the Wall Street Journal, the struggling wireless carrier officially selected a new steward, Dan Hesse, on Tuesday. Hesse comes from Embarq, a phone company that was spun out of Sprint last year, and his primary duty will now be to "wring synergies out of the 2005 merger of Sprint and Nextel," as the Journal puts it.
Anyone who's followed that deal knows it's been the source of multiple headaches for the company as it struggles to retain subscribers and deal with plummeting customer satisfaction ratings.
And as the Journal notes, Hesse has the distinct advantage of having strong wireless experience and being well known to Sprint's board. Most importantly, he has not been a longtime employee of either Sprint or Nextel, and has thus been able to avoid being "infected with the bitterness of the merger."
Indeed, while it's been close to two years since the companies joined, their cultures have never really integrated. Sprint employees apparently blame Nextel's poor network infrastructure as a major source of the combined companies' recent turmoil. Nextel workers, on the other hand, view Sprint as overly bureaucratic and slow-moving.
Let the synergy wringing begin!
[Via WSJ]
