BT appoints BG Group’s Lowth as FD

BT HAS CONFIRMED BG Group’s Simon Lowth will succeed outgoing group finance director Tony Chanmugam later this year.

Alongside his three-year stint at BG, Lowth has also held the top finance post at AstraZeneca and ScottishPower inside the past 11 years. He has also been non-executive director at Standard Chartered since 2010.

He will join BT on 4 July after a handover period with Chanmugam, who is to focus on integrating the mobile network provider EE into BT.

Chanmugam, who has served as BT’s group FD since 2008, announced he would step down after the company reported its best quarterly revenue growth in more than seven years and the completion of its £12.5bn deal to acquire mobile network EE.

A 20-year veteran of the company, Chanmugam is credited as one of the chief architects behind BT’s move from telco provider to multi-media broadband provider and sports broadcaster.

BT Group chief executive Gavin Patterson said: “Simon brings a wealth of experience to BT, having served as CFO and a board director for a number of major international companies, and I’m thrilled he’s joining. On top of his solid financial acumen, his strong organisational leadership and engineering experience at a number of leading infrastructure companies will be a real asset for BT.”

Chanmugam was interviewed by Financial Director last year, telling us that he wants BT bechmarked with the likes of Amazon in terms of efficiency and customer service, rather than fellow telco businesses. “If I look at customer service, I don’t really want to be benchmarked in the sector as a business – I would rather be compared with the Amazons of the world,” he said at the time.