FT-ETNO Summit 2019

Börje Ekholm has been President and CEO of the Ericsson Group since 16 January 2017, having been a board member since 2006.

Most recently Mr Ekholm was CEO of Patricia Industries, a division within Investor AB (2015 – January 15, 2017). Prior to assuming this position in 2015, he was President and CEO of Investor AB between 2005 and 2015, and prior to that head of new investments and President of Investor Growth Capital Inc. He has also held positions at Novare Kapital AB and McKinsey & Co Inc.

He furthermore is a board member of Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and Alibaba, Inc and a Member of the Board of Trustees of Choate Rosemary Hall.

Mr Ekholm holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and an MBA from INSEAD in France, and an honorary doctorate from The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

Alexandre Fonseca has been CEO of Altice Portugal since November 2017. He is also Executive Manager at ALTICE LABS Portugal, an Altice Group research and development unit where he leads innovation and future thinking on technology, focusing on hardware development, OSS/BSS and TV and interactive platforms. He joined Altice in 2012, when it entered Portugal.

Previously he was CEO of B2B operators ONI Portugal and ONI Mozambique, and CTO of cable company Cabovisão. Between 1995 and 2007, he worked as a management consultant specialising in IT and telecoms in Portugal and abroad with Coopers & Lybrand, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and IBM. 

He has worked on complex and multinational projects, as well as technology strategy, operations, innovation and IT, with a special emphasis on transformation, restructuring, reorganisation and M&A.

A member of several telecom and IT industry associations, he contributes project management, strategy and communication expertise. He appears regularly in the Portuguese media, and participates in academic initiatives across telecom, technology and management.

He holds a degree in Computer Science Engineering from Lisbon University and an MA in Sales & Marketing Management from TeamView Institute.

Timotheus Höttges has been CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG since January 2014.

From 2009 until his appointment as CEO, he was a member of the Board of Management responsible for Finance and Controlling. For the three years preceding that, he was a member of the Board of Management responsible for the T-Home unit. In this position, Mr Höttges oversaw the fixed-line network and broadband business, as well as integrated sales and service in Germany. Under his leadership, T-Home became the market leader in terms of new DSL customers and developed its Internet TV service, Entertain, into a mass-market product while stabilising its profitability. After implementing various cost-cutting programmes at T-Home and in the European mobile communications subsidiaries, Mr Höttges became responsible for the Group-wide Save for Service efficiency enhancement program. In 2005, he headed European operations as member of the Board of Management, T-Mobile International.

From 2000 until 2004, he was Managing Director, Finance and Controlling, before becoming Chairman of the Managing Board of T-Mobile Deutschland.
In 1992, he joined the VIAG Group, where he became divisional manager in 1997 and, later, a member of the extended management board responsible for controlling, corporate planning, and M&A. As project manager, he played a central role in the merger between VIAG AG and VEBA AG, which together formed E.on AG, in 2000.

Mr Höttges studied business administration at Cologne University, going on to spend three years with a business consulting company.

José María Álvarez Pallete became Chairman and CEO of Telefónica SA in April 2016, and has been a board member since 2006. He also sits on the executive committee.

He joined the group in 1999 as a General Manager of Finance for Telefónica Internacional, and later that year became General Manager of Corporate Finance. In 2002, he was appointed Chairman and CEO of Telefónica Internacional. In 2006, he was named Managing Director of Telefónica Latin America and then Chairman and CEO of that division in 2009. In 2011 he went on to become Chairman and CEO of Telefónica Europe, and in 2012 Chief Operating Officer at group level.

In 1995, he joined Cementos Portland (Cemex) as head of investor relations, eventually becoming financial manager for Spain, General Manager for Administration and Finance in Indonesia and joining the board of Cemex Asia.

He began his career with Arthur Young in 1987, before joining Benito & Monjardín / Kidder, Peabody & Co. in 1988.

Industry awards include Best Practice, M&A (CFO Europe Magazine, 2001), Forum de Alta Dirección Golden Master (2007), Best Business Leader (El Economista, 2011), Award of Excellence (Association of Telecommunication Technical Engineers, 2013), the Medalla Sorolla (The Hispanic Society of America, 2014), Innovative Corporate Leader of the Year (Latin Trade, 2014).

Mr Álvarez-Pallete has a degree in Economics and Advanced Research degree from the Complutense University of Madrid. He also studied Economics at the Free University of Brussels, and holds an international management programme degree from IPADE.

Stéphane Richard has been Chairman and CEO of Orange since March 2011. Having joined the company in September 2009, and has successively occupied the positions of Deputy CEO in charge of French operations, CEO Delegate, and CEO. From 2007 to 2009, Mr Richard was Chief of Staff to the French Minister for the Economy, Industry, and Employment. Prior to that he was Deputy CEO of Veolia Environnement and CEO of Veolia Transport, as well as being a director of Orange. Between 1992 and 2003, he was deputy to the CFO of Compagnie Générale des Eaux, CEO of Compagnie Immobilière Phénix, and Chairman of CGIS (Compagnie Générale d’Immobilier et de Services), now Nexity.

Mr Richard is a graduate of École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) and École Nationale d’Administration.

President & CEO of Telenor Group, Sigve Brekke was previously EVP and Head of Region Asia. He played an instrumental role in building the company’s regional footprint, from helping setting the initial direction in 1999 to shaping its leadership in key Asian markets.

He joined Telenor as an adviser, later becoming manager for business development. Since then, he has been CEO of Dtac and Uninor, and led M&A activities as well as the entry into the Myanmar market.

Telenor Group is a leading telecommunications company across Scandinavia and Asia with 172 million customers and sales of around USD 14 billion in 2017. 

Prior to joining Telenor, Mr Brekke had a political career starting with several positions in the Labor Youth Organisation (AUF). He served as State Secretary of Defence in Norway from 1993 to 1996.

He holds a MA in Public Administration from John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Based in San Francisco, Géraldine Le Meur, a French-American entrepreneur, investor, board member founded her first company at the age of 23. Since the very early days of the Internet in 1995, she successfully pursued her entrepreneurial journey in the tech ecosystem, founding a web agency, a web hosting company, a blogging platform and a trailblazer event, Le Web, which brought all of Silicon Valley key players in Europe.

Ms Le Meur is an active Angel Investor and she invested in companies such as LinkedIn, LendingClub, Teads, Evernote, WP engine. In 2016, she co-founded The Refiners, a San Francisco based pre-seed fund and program devoted to foreign founders. The Refiners Fund I backed and invested in 56 companies. In February 2019, she published "Step it up How French women hack work-life balance" to demystify female entrepreneurship and help women connect to role models grounded in real life, translated from her French book "Comme Elles Entreprenez Votre Vie!".

Nuala O’Connor is president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a global non-profit committed to the advancement of digital human rights and civil liberties, including privacy, freedom of expression, and human agency.

Ms O’Connor has served in a number of presidentially appointed positions, including as the first statutorily mandated chief privacy officer in US federal government when she served at the Department of Homeland Security. she has held senior corporate leadership positions on privacy, data, and customer trust at Amazon, General Electric, and DoubleClick. She has practiced at several global law firms including Sidley Austin and Venable.

She is an advocate for the use of data and internet-enabled technologies to improve equity and amplify marginalized voices. Ms O’Connor holds an AB from Princeton, an MA in Education from Harvard, and a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center.