Level 3 taps company veteran Crouch to head up EMEA efforts

Level 3 is realigning its movement in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and its customer base there by naming Andrew Crouch as the region's president. Crouch, a UK native, has moved back to his homeland country to oversee the EMEA region following Level 3's close of its acquisition of tw telecom on Oct. 31.

Andrew Crouch Level 3 EMEA

Crouch

In his new role, Crouch will oversee strategy, marketing, sales, operations, the network and overall customer experience for the EMEA region. He will also be responsible for the GAM (Global Accounts Management) division across all Level 3 regions, which markets to and services global enterprise and wholesale customers.

Before taking on his latest role, Crouch served as Level 3's regional vice president of North America and Asia-Pacific. During his two-year tenure with that division, he and his team helped drive Level 3's Core Network Services (CNS) enterprise revenue growth more than 20 percent in North America.

He will permanently take over the EMEA role from James Heard, who left Level 3 in January after having to lay off 60 of its employees in the UK as part of a broader effort to trim costs at the company.

The service provider is hoping Crouch can take the experience he has had in North America to help right the ship in EMEA, which has struggled in recent years. In the third quarter, Level 3's EMEA revenue declined 5 percent to $219 million.

During the third quarter conference call, Level 3 said EMEA CNS revenue "was impacted by a few expected disconnects in both the wholesale and enterprise channels, adding that they "expect the EMEA region will continue to stabilize over the coming quarters."

EMEA is one of Level 3's largest regions, comprising of 30 countries that it serves with its portfolio of managed solutions over a global services platform that includes its own metro and pan-regional networks on three continents.

Although he has spent the past 13 years in North America, Crouch has plenty of European sales experience. Before coming to Level 3, he served as deputy general manager within the corporate clients division at British Telecom. In addition, he was the vice president of Commercial Operations with Concert Communications, at the time of a joint venture between British Telecom (NYSE: BT) and AT&T (NYSE: T).

For more:
- see the release

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