US: T-Mobile CEO John Legere will step down

T-Mobile announced Monday (November 18)  that CEO John Legere will be stepping down at the end of next April after his contract expires.

According to the Wall Street Journal the surprise move comes as speculation swirls about the possibility that Legere was a leading contender to become the next CEO of WeWork,  although Legere shot down reports that he was looking to take that job.

T-Mobile faces a litany of challenges before then, including an antitrust lawsuit brought by a coalition of state attorneys general against T-Mobile’s planned $26 billion-plus takeoverof Sprint. A trial is scheduled to start Dec. 9 in New York.

“The timing was always expected to be now, but we always expected the new T-Mobile to exist about six months ago,” Mr. Legere said Monday in a conference call.

Mr. Legere’s planned departure caps a seven-year stretch at the Bellevue, Wash., carrier, where he turned a struggling also-ran into the third-largest US carrier, largely by luring customers away from bigger rivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications. The company has grown its customer base while Sprint has faltered.