When you hear Darren Entwistle talk about his work and the things he is passionate about – telemedicine, for example – it’s clear he doesn’t mind bragging about his company.
Yet he doesn’t like talking to the press – not even when it’s to blow his own horn in an exit interview.
Entwistle announced last week he is stepping aside as CEO of Telus Corp. (TSX:T). He will hand over the reins to Joe Natale, Telus’ executive vice-president and chief commercial officer, but will stay on as executive chairman of the board.
The announcement took some analysts by surprise. Entwistle was not available last week to explain why he is stepping aside.
In an emailed comment to Business in Vancouver, however, he pointed out that he will still have considerable influence as the new executive chairman of the board.
“As president and CEO, Joe will lead our Telus team and our company’s operations,” Entwistle wrote. “Joe will also join our board of directors, reporting to myself.”
Josh Blair, Telus’ executive vice-president of human resources and chief corporate officer, said Entwistle’s move has a lot to do with the retirement of Brian Canfield, Telus’ chairman of the board, after 58 years with the company. Enwtistle will take over as executive chairman of the board.
Entwistle not only will be in charge of the board of directors, but will also be responsible for business strategy and will be the company’s senior executive at Telus’ headquarters in Vancouver, while Natale will operate out of the company’s Toronto office.
“Ultimately, Darren is accountable and responsible for the company’s strategy and the company’s performance on an ongoing basis,” Blair said. “He’ll be a very active executive chair and run the company as the top person out of Vancouver.”
Canfield will officially retire and Entwistle will formally hand over the CEO’s reins at Telus’ May 8 annual general meeting.
Entwistle is one of the longer-serving blue-chip CEOs in Canada and is credited for transforming Telus from a regional telecom into a national player. He was hired as CEO in 2000, at the age of 37, two years after BCTel merged with Alberta’s Telus.
One of the company’s first major strategic moves following the merger was the acquisition of Canadian wireless company Clearnet Communications for $6.6 billion in 2000 to create Telus Mobility. In 2000, data and wireless represented only 28% of the company’s revenues; today it accounts for 82%.
“One of the key hallmarks of his tenure in most of the companies he’s been involved with – but particularly Telus – is his uncanny ability to remain super-focused on the things that build value for the organization,” said Bill Tam, CEO of the BC Technology Industry Association. “Unlike other telecoms that oftentimes have gotten distracted with respect to investments or businesses that may be a bit further afield from their core business, Darren has resisted that.”
Telus is the only major telecom-Internet company in Canada, for example, that owns no media assets. It has focused strictly on being a service provider.
Even when Telus did start moving into television in 2005, it did not go into cable TV. Rather, it offered TV over the Internet. The company’s subscriptions to Optik TV in B.C., Alberta and Quebec have grown from 300,000 in 2011 to 800,000 today.
Under Entwistle’s leadership, Telus has also emerged as a major provider of telehealth services. The company has invested $1 billion in digital health services, including electronic medical records. The company has also focused heavily on customer satisfaction and boasts customer churn rates of less than 1% for its wireless business.
“I’m a big fan of differentiation, and I think he’s done an absolutely fantastic job in differentiating Telus from all the other carriers in the country,” said Alpha Technologies CEO Mark Schnarr, who worked with Entwistle at Telus from 2000 to 2006. “When he embraces a philosophy, he goes at it pretty hard. They have a customer-first philosophy. You know when Darren says, ‘Yes, we want to have good returns to shareholders, but in order to get there we have to put our customers first,’ you know that that’s going to be enmeshed in their culture.”
Since 2000, Telus’ shareholder returns, based on dividends and price appreciation, have been 286%. Entwistle’s tenure as CEO hasn’t been entirely without its challenges. Between 2012 and 2013, he fought withMason Capital Management LLC – a New York hedge fund and major shareholder – over Telus’ plans to convert non-voting to voting shares, a battle Telus eventually won. In 2005, Telus became embroiled in a pitched battle with the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU) – a dispute that had been brewing since Telus and BCTel merged, and which culminated in a prolonged strike.
Lee Riggs, TWU’s national president, said the biggest bone of contention was that Telus wanted to contract out jobs and send call centre jobs offshore.
“It was the darkest period in the history of the TWU. We lost thousands of members through that process. It was a horrible time, but we’ve come through it.”
Entwistle eventually broke the deadlock with a collective agreement that merged six separate collective agreements with five different unions into one collective agreement with the TWU.
