Frans-Willem de Kloet, currently MD, Liberty Global Business Services, has been appointed MD of UPC Czech Republic.
Replacing Vaclav Barton, who will retire, de Kloet will assume the position on January 1, 2014 and assume all day-to-day operating responsibilities.
As MD, Liberty Global Business Services de Kloet has been responsible for the overall B2B markets of Liberty Global in Europe.
Prior to Liberty Global he worked at Hewlett Packard, where he was responsible for the Dutch telecom, media, entertainment and financial services sector.
He was also active as regional director of global accounts at MCI/Verizon between 1998 and 2005 and started his career at KPN.
Commenting on the appointment, Diederik Karsten, executive VP of Liberty Global’s European Broadband Operations, said “With Frans-Willem de Kloet we will have a well-experienced successor with a proven track record at Liberty Global.
His role fits excellent with our activities in the Czech Republic where we also have an important B2B business, following our acquisition of Sloane Park in 2011. UPC Czech has a nation-wide fibre network, connecting its existing metropolitan networks into a full national meshed network reaching over 90% of the country with connections to the neighboring countries and has state-of-the-art datacenters. I’m convinced that Frans-Willem will lead UPC Czech into its next phase, exploring new opportunities and benefitting from the economies of scale of Liberty Global.”
Chris Coles will meanwhile succeed Frans-Willem de Kloet as MD, Liberty Global Business Markets on January 1, 2014. He will be relocating to Amsterdam from Denver, where he has been running his own consulting business.