Virgin Media O2 has announced the appointment of former William Hill chief executive Ulrik Bengtsson as its chief operating officer ahead of the June departure of Jeff Dodds.
Dodds has been COO of Virgin Media O2 since the business was formed and, before that, at Virgin Media from June 2019 to May 2021. He had previously spent five years at Virgin Media, including as Chief Marketing Officer. Dodds is to join an as yet unnamed company as its CEO.
Bengtsson will oversee the company’s customer service, install and field technicians, offline sales and more than 300 retail stores spread across the country.
He brings a range of operational and digital experience having spent almost three years as CEO of William Hill International from 2019, joining the company as Chief Digital Officer in April 2018. In 2021, Ulrik oversaw the sale of William Hill to Caesars Entertainment for £2.9bn, representing a doubling of the business’ valuation since 2019, and then led the separation of the US business and the sale of the European business to 888.
Rob Evans, managing director of Fixed Network Expansion is leaving for health reasons and will be replaced by Julie Agnew who has covered the role on an interim basis since the start of the year.
Agnew will be primarily focused on delivering fibre rollout on behalf of nexfibre, a joint venture established last year by Liberty Global, Telefonica and InfraVia Capital Partners. Virgin Media O2 is the build supplier and anchor tenant of this network which aims to rollout full fibre to at least 5 million more premises by 2026.
Gareth Turpin now leads a single consumer commercial division focused on fixed, mobile and convergence growth and performance, while Kay Schwabedal now leads a division focused on digital transformation, product and value creation.
Lutz Schüler, CEO of Virgin Media O2, said: “As Virgin Media O2 approaches two years as a joint business I’m extremely proud of the progress that we have made, and both Jeff and Rob have played a major part in this success, both before and after the merger. As we now look ahead to the next chapter, putting customers right at the heart of our decision making, accelerating our digital transformation activity and ramping up our network build engine, it’s fantastic to have Ulrik and Julie as part of our leadership team.
He thanked Dodds and Evans for their work with the company.
