T-Mobile MD Steps Down After Data Theft Scandal

T-Mobile Germany's Managing Director, Philipp Humm has resigned from the job, in the face of a data theft scandal which has hit the company in the past month. He will however keep a job with the parent company, Deutsche Telekom as T-Home Board member and will remain T-Mobile's Sales Director.

Whomever gets the job of MD will no longer be allowed to be responsible for sales, and will take on the task of heading a new privacy department.

Last month, T-Mobile Germany admitted to losing the personal data belonging to its 17 million customers. The theft, which had only just been revealed occurred back in early 2006, and involved telephone numbers, dates of birth, addresses and email addresses.

In a statement, the company said that irrespective of the legal assessment, Philipp Humm as the former Managing Director assumes responsibility for the data incidents and their handling at T-Mobile Deutschland. In the future, Humm will focus on his expanded sales tasks. Apart from his existing responsibility for mobile communications and fixed network sales, he will be responsible for integrating business customer sales into Deutsche Telekom's sales structure. The Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom decided yesterday to transfer T-Systems' business customer unit into the sales structure of T-Home.

The new Managing Director will be appointed in the near future. Apart from responsibility to steer profit and loss as well as strategy, the Managing Director will also consolidate the data privacy, security and legal affairs functions in his or her department using the resources of Deutsche Telekom's central departments Legal Affairs and Group Security.

"We have decided to separate the functions of Managing Director and Sales Director to give more attention and more weight to the topics of data privacy, corporate security and legal affairs," says Hamid Akhavan, Supervisory Board Chairman of T-Mobile Deutschland.

Posted to the site on 5th November 2008