Spain's Telefonica, recently lauded by many for its high-flying financial performance and aggressive international growth, has named a new chief operating officer, Julio Linares. Linares is a long-time Telefonica employee and had been in charge of synergies, IT and business development. The appointment is notable in that Telefonica Chairman and CEO Cesar Alierta actually eliminated the COO job in 2003, and also because many company observers had hoped Alierta would split the chairman and CEO positions, rather than hire a COO.
In separate news, Telefonica was mentioned as an investor in the most recent financing round for San Francisco-based mobile video social networking firm kyte.tv. Telefonica reportedly invested $5.6 million.
For more:
- read more about the COO hiring in The Financial Times
- find out more about the kyte.tv deal in NewTeeVee
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Telefonica last month reported a huge jump in quarterly profit