Pleasantries aside, and returning to our
matter du jour..
Sharon White: incoming Ofcom chiefThe toadying mouthpiece of the City of London, the
Financial Times, runs a biography of sorts for Sharon White, incoming Ofcom chief. From the obsequious tone to the FT's copy, White clearly passes muster among the City's slickers. But maybe for all the wrong reasons.
The FT reports on White's previous posts at the
World Bank and at the
Treasury where she was "
one of the favourite mandarins" of
Bilderberg grandee and former Tory chancellor, Kenneth Clarke. With notches like that on her career bedpost, she's certainly done her stint of pandering to the wants and whims of
High Finance. Expect no rocking, then, of the corporate apple-cart, once she's installed in her new pad at the Ivory Towers of Ofcom. BT and its shareholders, both here and abroad, are doubtlessly reassured by a CV like that
White is one of the very few female heads at this level of government, and she's black too. Even if she does grow some regulatory balls, she'll face an uphill struggle trying to regulate an industry dominated by misogynistic willy-waving white men.
However, the FT stays loyally by her side here. Pitching White as the Mother Teresa of the telco sector; and blessed too with the diplomatic magnanimity of Mahatma Gandhi....
[Her] diplomatic skills..will come in handy when mediating the regular battles between telecoms and media companies. One former official described her style as “like a nurse” who came to tell the patient how best to take the medicine, but brooking no dissent.
Friends say it is important not to underestimate the distance she has had to travel, from a black working-class background, to breach bastions long dominated by middle-class white men.
After graduating from Cambridge, and before entering the civil service fast stream as an economist at the department for education and science, Ms White briefly worked for a church in a deprived part of Birmingham. Both this experience, and her family background, have left their mark.
One senior civil servant, who has seen her meeting members of the public beyond the confines of Whitehall, noted her ability to forge easy connections with people on the receiving end of public services, whom many of her rank would pass their entire lives without encountering.
...
One broadcasting executive said Ms White’s economics background would fit Ofcom’s evidence-led approach. “Although she’s highbrow, she’s also incredibly engaged with popular culture,” the person added. “She’s not one of these people who only goes to the opera.”
And to boot, White is also "incredibly engaged with popular culture". Oh dear. An
aficionado of Trash TV, do they mean? With a remit of regulating our broadcasting industry and its ever-plunging standards? Perfick for the job, eh?!
In the third of the four FT articles linked below, we find, more seriously, renewed calls for liberating Openreach from the grasping clutches of the pantomime villain, the BT Group...
The regulator will also face a difficult job deciding to what extent the deal [to buy EE] will make BT too dominant in the telecoms market. The group will have no greater market share in a single sector but the regulator may want to consider the broader context if BT can cross-subsidise various services to the detriment of competitors.
Rivals such as Vodafone and TalkTalk will push heavily for price reductions for access to the group’s fixed line broadband network — and potentially could argue the case for a split of BT’s Openreach infrastructure arm entirely.
..
However, there were concerns about the reaction of Ofcom, the industry regulator, which may view the combination of BT and EE as creating a dominant company across telecoms markets.
Stephane Beyazian at Raymond James expects the transaction will be cleared by antitrust authorities, but there will be more regulatory scrutiny of BT if it does buy EE.
TalkTalk, the group’s fixed-line rival, has argued that Ofcom needs to more strictly regulate and potentially explore the separation of BT’s Openreach arm, which provides wholesale access to the group’s fibre networks.
Rick Mattila, telecoms analyst at MUFG, pointed to the unknown impact of regulatory reaction “and in particular any weakening of the earnings of BT’s Openreach unit”.
Lots of
off-the-record comment here, from BT's rivals and their City sock-puppets. Here's one comment echoing what was said earlier in this thread. It's about BT abusing its dominance of the local loop and our state-funded fibre network; and using it to build a low-cost mobile backhaul, to cross-subsidise its new cellular network.
Vodafone, along with TalkTalk and Three, is also expected to raise concerns that BT could benefit disproportionately from the provision of so-called “mobile backhaul” — the underground cables that carry calls between mobile masts — with its wholly owned mobile business. The carriers are expected to say that they might be at a disadvantage because BT could use its national network to benefit its consumer business.
This takeover-cum-merger could take years to thrash out; certainly with all the regulatory brouhaha, it's going to rumble on for a while yet. And even if BT does seal the deal, the FT warns that it could find itself struggling to recoup its £12.5bn purchase cost for EE. Something for BT pension-holders to mull over.
[Our] parting shot is to point out the communications industry has a history of spending zillions on the fashion of the time from cable to 3G. In years to come shareholders will forget the exact number on EE’s price tag. But they may remember what the acquisition did to their returns.
[1]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4edb04be-850c-11e4-ab4e-00144feabdc0.html[2]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c57e1c2-7cae-11e4-9a86-00144feabdc0.html[3]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/220991a6-847d-11e4-bae9-00144feabdc0.html[4]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/18859c8c-8465-11e4-8cc5-00144feabdc0.html