Yuval Keinan will become deputy CEO of Partner Communications (TASE:PTNR), which has a licence to operate using the Orange brand, at the start of next year.
Yuval Keinan will become deputy CEO of Partner Communications (TASE:PTNR), which has a licence to operate using the Orange brand, at the start of next year.
Keinan is currently vice president and CTO of Bezeq (TASE:BEZQ), Israel’s incumbent operator and a rival of Partner, where he has been for the past 11 years.
Partner CEO Isaac Benbenisti said Keinan’s experience would stand him in good stead to take on the newly-created position.
“I am sure that his creativity, ability to lead complex technological and business processes and his innovative, outside-of-the-box thinking will provide an excellent platform for success in his position as the deputy CEO,” Benbenisti said.
Partner and Bezeq, trading as Pelephone, have a similar number of subscribers in Israel’s highly competitive mobile market. In their Q2 results, Partner said it had 2.7 million while Bezeq has 2.5 million.
Both operators trail market leader Cellcom, which is currently assessing a possible acquisition of smaller rival Golan Telecom. A takeover may cool the fierce competition in the market which has negatively hurt all the operators’ recent financial results.
Partner’s use of the Orange brand is a legacy of its ownership by Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong group which created Orange before selling it to Mannesmann in 1999, which then sold it to France Telecom soon after. Partner is 51%-owned by Israeli multinational Scailex.