KPN names Eelco Blok new CEO

KPN (NYSE: KPN) finally came clean that Eelco Blok will be the service provider's next CEO and chairman when Ad Scheepbouwer retires next year after its annual shareholders' meeting in April.

When he officially takes the reins in April, he will make EUR 800,000 ($1.1 million) in addition to various incentives. Until April, Blok will work alongside Scheepbouwer as company COO.

Since joining KPN's management board in 2004, Blok has held various management positions and has been credited with improving KPN's performance in its Dutch homeland in addition to its strategy in Belgium and Germany.

Blok's record at KPN is far from clean. He not only was cited in an investigation by Dutch telecom regulator OPTA investigation for illegal discounts in the fixed line business market, but was also named as a defendant in the 2002 bankruptcy case of the former KPNQwest (NYSE: Q) joint venture.

However, those issues did little to dissuade the service provider from naming Blok as the company's CEO successor. And despite reports that the company was considering Belgium's Telenet Group (TNET.BR) CEO Duco Sickinghe or Deutsche Telekom board member Niek Jan van Damme, Reuters reports that Scheepbouwer wanted to name an internal candidate to take over the CEO post.

For more:
- Telecompaper has this article
- Reuters has this perspective

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