Telenor Pakistan announced today the appointment of Irfan Wahab Khan, to the position of Deputy CEO of the company in addition to his current responsibilities as Chief Marketing Officer.
Michael Foley, CEO Telenor said:
Irfan’s loyalty and long experience with Telenor Pakistan, in Asia and Europe, coupled with his strong record of value creation made this the easiest of appointments.
Irfan has been with Telenor for 11 years, starting as Executive Vice President and Head of Corporate Affairs Division at Telenor Pakistan in 2004. Since then he has served in various Telenor Business Units in Asia and Europe. Since 2009, he has served as Group Vice President Devices and VP-Head of Asia Distribution within the Telenor Group in Norway and Thailand respectively.
In Bangkok, Khan was responsible for developing sales and distribution capabilities, organization systems and processes for over 1.1 million retailers within 5 countries in Asia. As VP Devices with Telenor Group, he was responsible for Group Device Strategy, Partnerships and Innovation, Handset Bundles and Device Portfolio of over USD 2 Billion across 11 countries.
Khan rejoined Telenor Pakistan as Vice President and Head of Commercial Division in 2013 where Marketing, Segments, Brands, Sales and Distribution, Product Development, Customer Care, Business Intelligence and Customer Centricity functions fall under his portfolio. He is also a Board Member of Tameer Microfinance Bank which is 51% owned by Telenor Pakistan and Telenor LDI (PVT) Ltd.
Over the last ten years, Telenor Pakistan reached more than 36.5 million subscribers, gained Revenue market share, launched largest 3G footprint and a number of innovative products like GSM based life insurance product “Talk Shawk Mohafiz” and introduced Internet of Things in Pakistan for the first time.
Irfan Wahab Khan, the newly appointed Deputy CEO of Telenor Pakistan, said:
It has been a decade of remarkable experiences and learning that I spent with Telenor and made some great friends along the way. I am humbled by the trust that Telenor Pakistan has put in me for the additional responsibilities and I pledge my commitment to take our vision to Empower Societies a step further.
Prior to joining Telenor Pakistan, Khan has served as Director for Products and New Services at T-Mobile USA, General Manager at Ericsson Philippines, BSS Engineering at Orange, UK and Director of Business Transformation at Telcordia Technologies USA.
Irfan has a B.Sc. in Electrical Telecom Engineering from University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. He graduated in Mobile and Personal Communications from University of Westminster London UK in 1994, followed by Financial Management from Harvard Business School, Marketing from London Business School. He is also a life time alumni of INSEAD.
Congrats to IWK but last month when ex CFO was forced to leave telenor.
Gabor Kocsis was one of the very strong FINANCE professional in Telenor group and very nice person. Indeed Norwegians work straightly and Telenor culture in Europe is good but in Pakistan it has been rusted by Pakistani management in form of directors and managers. I have no doubt in raising my voice that instead of Gabor being at finance division head, his directors mainly Murtaza Ali should have resigned on moral grounds because all financial numbers are crunched from Financial control dept. and then goes to Business planning & analysis director Salman Dard.
Again these people specially Murtaza Ali can only do internal politics and now he indirectly targeted CFO instead of stepping down himself on moral grounds…if there are any moral values in him.
BEWARE TELENOR GROUP AND MANAGEMENT.
Whatever the case, at the end of the day in the case of any issue with financial numbers, the CFO is ultimately responsible. Yes one could blame a junior for actually causing a problem but the CFO should have systems that catch such blatant and to some extent material errors through cross verification and financial controls. The CFO while very much liked by his colleagues had to go precisely because of this failure… not a moral or ethical one, but one of financial oversight. One could even say this could be interpreted to some extent as incompetence.
Gabor was Hungarian, not Norwegian :) – and yes, he was removed for being the CFO responsible for making sure that such incorrect financial reporting does not take place. I am sure there must be others down the line who were equally incompetent and should face the music, but the buck always stops at the head, which in this case happens to be Gabor.
P.S: Gabor’s last project in the group (GERP) has been a huge failure as well. Just FYI :)
I know thats why some people of GERP like KS were move back to TSS Pak. Secondly I know he was hungarian but i was talking about norwegian standards.
If you know, then would you agree that he may have competency issues as well?
Alvi sb what i have heard is that both Salman Dard and Murtaza Ali were aware of this happening and always facilitated Gabor. They considered it as part of their jobs to please their boss and when it got leaked out they put the blame on Gabor. A director cannot be given the benefit of being a junior resource rather a check on the CFO. Lets hope telenor management sees the truth and compliance acts accordingly.
Telenor standards in ethics and Compliance at Norway have proved their impartial and high standards. But what about Local Management in Pakistan who were reporting to CFO and doing all financial entries and reporting How can we call experienced Directors as Juniors (They were either violating Compliance rules and Code of Conduct or are extremely incompetent not to see and report it -7 & 8 COC). Juniors is a funny term for such high paid and experience people. The Billions and trillions of Share Holders money are in hands of such people and what will this news do to investors trust across the world
Murtaza’s politics and working style against Telenor Values is public news for everyone except for local management.
It’s a test for Compliance team to implement paragraph 7 & 8 of Telenor code of conduct. this Code in Pakistan is now just a joke and tool for Management to punish people on personal dislikes and issues. Lets see if its taken seriously this time.
Many congrats to IWK for a well deserved promotion. Hoping to see him grow further and continue to inspire.
For the disgruntled ex-employees commenting on Gabor’s resignation, TP has a well known system of accountability, complimented by a culture of trust and openness. Both Murtaza and Salman have the highest ethical standards which are not yours to judge with all due respect.
Peace!! :)
Bloody brilliant. CFO was asked to leave for misreporting revenue and everyone who actually did the misreporting is still working in Telenor Pakistan (as the CFO cant misreport revenue by himself). On top, the CMO who is the actual owner of revenue is promoted to Deputy CEO because he did not know if the revenue he was claiming as “value generation (one of the reasons for his promotion)” was correct or not. What a wonderful reward system. Irfan Wahab should be fired just on the principle of complacency and ignorance. A head of sales and marketing who does not know if the revenue his team is generating is correct or incorrect is not only incompetent but also ignorant. He should be held as accountable as the CFO for this blunder along with the people who were involved at the operational level. It must be a very disappointing and demotivating time for the people in Finance to see that there is NO accountability for unethical practices.
@AK “Both Murtaza and Salman have the highest ethical standards which are not yours to judge with all due respect.” It is wonderful that you have an opinion and have an issue with someone else’s opinion.
Hey… Why stop with CMO. The CEO also signed off on the numbers. He should be replaced as well. Off course the Board was also involved so hey, lets get rid of them too. Not to mention the internal / external auditors. But since the above didn’t make the operational numbers, everyone reporting to them directly or indirectly should be fired as well and the Company closed down. It’s good to have a moral compass that always points north but one must learn to navigate using it as well.
Please appreciate the fact that the error was internally identified, rectified and a process put in place to ensure it never happens again. Thats what progressive companies do.
As far as employee motivation is concerned, Telenor has been winning the employee motivation / engagement awards for several years now. Let’s wait for this year’s results shall we?
Hey Erij
Dont be sarcastic here. If you are not from finance background you dont know. Simple rule is if CFO was held responsible and had to resign who did not make up these numbers wrongly reported to the group then why not GROUP should keep an eye on our sweet so called JUNIORS (Murtaza Ali /SD) who makes and grinds all these nos. He is highly paid above 500k pm with perks and still someone else was held responsible. That’s hard and injustice …all my sympathies for ex CFO.
@ Mr AK
Its not about disgruntled ex employees as many discussing here are current employees FYI. Secondly i know about company’s high standards but raising voice for the right thing on any forum is being a LIVE person rather than just tail carrying of bosses which you are doing even on this site :-)
Mr Alvi
What you are doing is not raising your voice.You were in fact accusing two resources by taking their names. Had you stopped there it would have been ok but you commented on their working style, spoke of politics and pettiness… something only one carrying a grudge would do. There have been plenty of comments for the same persons but only yours were slanderous, of a personal nature and vindictive. Hence my defense of these gentlemen. If that’s tail carrying… I’m proud to be a silent carrier bro :)