John Legere, the chief executive of T-Mobile since 2012, was the public face of the company and its biggest cheerleader. He tirelessly promoted T-Mobile’s price promotions and gleefully bashed its rivals before his millions of followers on social media.
On Monday, T-Mobile announced that Legere would step down at the end of April after his contract expires. The announcement comes at a crucial time for T-Mobile, which is moving closer to acquiring a smaller rival, Sprint, to create a wireless carrier with more than 100 million customers, putting it within striking distance of Verizon and AT&T.
T-Mobile and Sprint had earlier said that Legere would be the chief executive of the combined company after the deal was completed. Instead, he will be succeeded at T-Mobile by Mike Sievert, T-Mobile’s president and chief operating officer who is now expected to become boss of the new company.
The merger, valued at $26.5 billion, is central to T-Mobile’s strategy to gain ground in an industry that is spending billions of dollars building out 5G cellular networks while engaging in intense price wars.
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