The country’s third largest mobile operator lifecell, with a client base of 12 million people, announced on April 4 that its CEO Burak Ersoy leaving the company and the telecoms industry.
Ersoy will leave Ukraine on May 1, after a one-month “transition period, transferring its responsibilities” to a successor and “providing strategic support to the team.”
Ersoy’s initial task was to rebrand the mobile operator, which he did in January 2016, and to roll out the 3G across all the Ukrainian oblasts.
“Today, when the transformation period is over and lifecell is taken to a new level, Ersoy is completing his mission at lifecell,” reads the company’s sparse statement.
Nobody from the carrier’s key management team has been more forthcoming. However, according to Ukrainian online tech journal AIN.ua sources, the separation decision was made by lifecell’s parent company, Turkcell, where Ersoy used to work.
Ersoy was appointed as lifecell CEO in October 2015 after serving as chief sales officer at Turkcell in Turkey.
In a March Kyiv Post interview, he seemed determined to fight for a company’s place on the Ukrainian telecoms market. Lifecell has been operating in Ukraine since 2005. It started under the brand life;) which the operator changed in January 2016.
Turkcell became an owner of 100 percent of lifecell shares in 2015, buying the remaining 45 percent from Ukrainian billionaire oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s Systems Capital Management holding.
Reportedly, Turkcell paid $100 million for these shares.
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected].
