Verizon's Mead to handle Frontier purchase before retiring

Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is realigning its top management team by reassigning its Verizon Wireless chief Dan Mead to a new role as executive vice president and president of Strategic Initiatives with a focus on overseeing the sale of its wireline properties in California, Florida and Texas to Frontier Communications.

Dan Mead Verizon

Mead

Mead, 61, who is best known as Verizon's executive VP and president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, expects to retire after he completes the strategic initiatives like the Frontier sale, according to an SEC filing.

The two companies hope to complete the transaction in the first half of 2016.

Although Frontier maintains that the assets it is acquiring in these three states were maintained at a more acceptable standard than those it acquired from Verizon in 2010, having a tenured executive to oversee the purchase and integration will ensure that they can potentially solve issues and have accountability before the switchover is completed.

Earlier this month, Verizon reached a deal to sell off its wireline properties in California, Florida and Texas for $10.5 billion and a separate deal to sell 11,300 of its company-owned wireless towers as part of two broader initiatives: concentrate its wireline operations on the East Coast while paying down debt related to its recent purchase of AWS-3 spectrum.

Verizon also named John Stratton, formerly the EVP and president of Global Enterprise and Consumer for Verizon, to take on a new role as executive vice president and president of operations, with operational responsibility for Verizon's wireless and wireline businesses.

Like Mead, Stratton will continue to report to Lowell C. McAdam, chairman and CEO of Verizon.

For more:
- see the SEC filing

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