Mercury men grab top C&WC jobs

Mercury Communications bosses have won the first round in the fight for top jobs at the soon-to-be-launched 5bn company Cable & Wireless Communications (C&WC).

But the announcement of the company’s marketing director, expected as part of the first wave of appointments, has been delayed. It is understood that there has been an internal disagreement over whether the marketing role should be centralised, or controlled by the individual business units. But that is denied by C&WC.

Five of the seven new senior managerial appointments at C&WC, including the business development director Darren Entwistle, and the managing director of consumer markets, Adrian Chamberlain, are currently Mercury managers.

CWC is the merger of Mercury Communications, Nynex Cable-Comms, Bell Cablemedia and Videotron, which is scheduled for a formal launch in May.

“There are three or four outstanding positions to be filled,” says a C&WC spokesman, “and marketing is one of those. But we had seven positions filled and felt it was appropriate to announce them. The marketing director role has not yet been agreed.”

Mercury Communications marketing director Simon Esberger is the most high-profile internal candidate in contention for that post.

Other Mercury bosses, Ian Hinchliffe, Rob Fisher and David Wickham take up the roles of managing director SME markets, managing director corporate markets and managing director international and partner services in the new venture respectively.

Bell Cablemedia’s Gilles Leclerc becomes managing director customer operations and Ted Hatch managing director networks.