Cincinnati Bell names Ted Torbeck CEO, Jack Cassidy vice chairman of board

Cincinnati Bell (NYSE: CBB) has realigned its top management team, naming Ted Torbeck as its new CEO and member of its board of directors on Thursday. Jack Cassidy has been named vice chairman of the board.

Ted Torbeck, Cincinnati Bell Jack Cassidy, Cincinnati Bell

Torbeck, left, and Cassidy.

Torbeck, who will succeed Cassidy, came to Cincinnati Bell in September 2010 to lead up the telco's communications group as the president and general manager of Cincinnati Bell Communications.

Later, in November 2010, the service provider realigned its operations into two units: communications and technology solutions.

During his tenure at the telco, Torbeck has helped drive the growth of both its Cyrus One data center business, which just went public, and its growing Fiber to the Premises (FTTP)-based Fioptics broadband services.

Cassidy will go down in Cincinnati Bell's history as the executive who helped the telco turn around its struggling wireline business. Over his nine-year reign as CEO, Cassidy steered the service provider into a number of new areas, including wireless, long distance, FTTP and the data center business.

His biggest and perhaps most successful bet as CEO came in 2010, when he led the acquisition of CyrusOne, which gave the telco a new foothold in the data center and cloud business. Since that time, CyrusOne has consistently performed well. In Q3 2012, CyrusOne's revenues rose to $57 million, up $10 million, or 20 percent.

CyrusOne launched its initial public offering (IPO) on Jan. 22. The data center business's (Nasdaq: CONE) shares rose almost 15 percent during its first day trading as a public company on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Cincinnati Bell said in a release that the appointments of Torbeck and Cassidy, set to go into effect immediately, are part of its "established succession plan."

For more:
- see the release

Special report: Wireline telecom earnings in the fourth quarter of 2012

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