After less than two years, the head of the telecommunications provider Vodafone Germany, Philipp Rogge (54), is unexpectedly leaving the company. The Belgian has decided to resign from his position and leave the company on March 31, Vodafone announced in Düsseldorf.
His successor will be the previous private customer board member Marcel de Groot (56). The Dutchman has been working for the Vodafone Group since 2008, including in Ireland and the Netherlands. “We will continue to do our homework” and “go on attack,” said de Groot after his promotion to boss.
Who was Rye?
Outgoing CEO Rogge is the son of former Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge. Philippe Rogge was initially a sailor, but once narrowly missed out on a ticket to the Olympics. In his professional life, he most recently worked at Microsoft before taking over the executive chair at Vodafone Germany in July 2022. The company was in a difficult phase at the time: While the Düsseldorf-based company was weakening in the mobile communications business, its competitors O2 Telefónica and Deutsche Telekom were making strong gains.
The more cautious Rogge differed significantly from his publicity-loving predecessor, the marketing specialist Hannes Ametsreiter. He decided that Vodafone should say goodbye to full-bodied advertising promises so that customers do not have excessive expectations and then later cancel in frustration.
Rogge campaigned to improve Vodafone networks and reduce the number of customer complaints. Price increases in the fixed network led to a decrease in customers but an increase in sales. In the mobile communications business, Vodafone has recorded customer growth again in recent quarters, but the competition has increased significantly more strongly – so Vodafone’s market share continues to fall.
The fact that Vodafone got its problems under control and returned to growth was a plus point for Rogge. The fact that the growth curve did not rise any steeper than it currently does and that the gap to the competition is still growing was a negative point. Vodafone has around 15,000 employees in Germany, around a third of them in Düsseldorf. The German subsidiary belongs to the British telecommunications group of the same name.