The need to build “second home markets” in fast-growing emerging economies is high on the minds of many CEOs. But few have come as far, and know as much about the challenges, as Zeinal Bava, the chief executive of Portugal Telecom (PT). Bava, 45, an investment banker before joining PT in 1999, and his management team set ambitious goals in early 2008: to raise the international share of PT’s revenues to 66 percent by year-end 2011, from 45 percent in 2007, and almost to double the customer base, to 100 million.
Bava was elected CEO in 2008, after PT finally thwarted a hostile-takeover bid by Sonaecom, a Portuguese competitor. Then, having turned around the performance of PT’s domestic and Brazilian operations, the management team faced another major challenge in 2010, when Telefónica acquired PT’s half of Brazil’s top mobile operator, Vivo. This left PT without its growth engine, which was contributing almost half of the company’s total revenues. Determined to revive the Brazil strategy, PT spent about half of the €7.5 billion proceeds from the sale of Vivo to buy a 25 percent stake in Brazil’s largest telecom company, Oi, thus starting anew with a similar level of exposure to the country.
Remaking Portugal Telecom: An interview with CEO Zeinal Bava