BERLIN — A business executive who became the first woman to be appointed chief financial officer of a major Dutch company resigned Tuesday, citing a dispute over a management reorganization at her employer, the phone operator KPN.
Carla Smits-Nusteling, KPN’s chief financial officer, resigned a little more than two years after being named to the position, saying she disagreed with a decision to quadruple the top management board to 12 members from three, the company said.
Mrs. Smits-Nusteling became the first woman appointed chief financial officer of a blue-chip company on Amsterdam’s benchmark AEX stock index in September 2009, when she was tapped by the then chief executive, Ad Scheepbouwer.
She had been working for KPN in a variety of financial controlling roles since 2000.
Last April, Mr. Scheepbouwer retired and was replaced by Eelco Blok, the KPN board member responsible for international mobile operations. Mr. Blok announced a reorganization to simplify KPN’s management, under which nine business units had been reporting independently to the three-member board.
Under Mr. Blok’s plan, the unit heads would join board members on an expanded “executive committee.” The 12-member group met informally several times late last year, and officially took up its new role Monday.
Mrs. Smits-Nusteling’s departure was announced the next day.
KPN said Mrs. Smits-Nusteling had informed KPN’s supervisory board, which oversees and appoints top managers, that she was stepping down because she disagreed with the governance of the new executive committee.
Stefan Simons, a KPN spokesman, said Mrs. Smits-Nusteling had declined to comment further and had agreed not to give interviews. KPN said she would leave the company in April.
“We regret Carla’s departure,” Jos Streppel, KPN’s supervisory board chairman, said in a statement. “Since her appointment as chief financial officer, Carla has performed as well as we had expected and has acted as a highly professional and engaged board member and C.F.O.”
KPN, the former Dutch phone monopoly, has been struggling in the Netherlands, one of Europe’s more competitive phone markets, where two cable television operators, UPC, a unit of Liberty Global, and Ziggo, also sell fixed-line voice and Internet services. In October, KPN had a 45 percent share of the fixed-line market and 46 percent of the mobile market, where it competes with the Dutch units of T-Mobile, Vodafone and more than 50 virtual operator resellers.
In April, when Mr. Blok became chief executive, KPN issued a profit warning, saying that Dutch consumers were increasingly using free Internet-based services like social networking and free Internet applications like Whatsapp, a smartphone Web texting service based in Mountain View, California, to avoid KPN’s calling and texting charges.
Until a replacement for Mrs. Smits-Nusteling is found, KPN said her job would be split between Eric Hageman, the head of the company’s Belgian operations, and Steven van Schilfgaarde, the corporate markets chief.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4eb534085d4b8a29bbebc4efae1a460a
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