GTT’s Calder to Step Down

Rick Calder is stepping down as CEO of GTT Communications next week after 13 years of leading the company. The company has begun a search for a replacement while putting in place a leadership group to run the company in the interim.

Under his tenure GTT embarked on a long, sustained rollup of telecommunications and internet infrastructure companies that brought its revenues above $3.5B last year.   The early acquisitions focused more on the managed services side of the business, but expanded in scope over time as GTT entered the global IP backbone, subsea, and fiber infrastructure spaces.  

The pendulum is starting to shift the other way now though, as GTT has been planning to divest itself of its infrastructure at the fiber level and shift it’s attention back to higher layers of the stack.  Most of that infrastructure came from the Interoute and Hibernia deals, and who might take it off of GTT’s hands remains a matter of speculation.

Ernie Ortega has been promoted to chief revenue officer, and he will join CFO Steven Berns, general counsel Chris McKee, and SVP Bob Burris in the leadership group. Ortega is a familiar face, having played key roles at Towerstream, XO, Cogent, and Colt over the last decade.

As for Rick Calder, the announcement didn’t hint what his next project might be.  I suspect he’ll turn up somewhere though.

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Categories: Internet Backbones · Jobs · Mergers and Acquisitions