Tom Alexander (businessman)

Thomas Simon Alexander (born 10 July 1959)[1] is a British businessman, and a former Chief Executive of Orange (UK).

Early life

Alexander attended Millfield, the independent school, as a day scholar from 1971-75.[2]

Career

Alexander worked for BT Cellnet from 1992-98.

Virgin Mobile

Alexander set up and founded Virgin Mobile, which was launched in November 1999 with his colleague from BT Cellnet, Jo Steel .[3] Virgin Mobile was a joint venture between One2One and Virgin Group. He became Chief Executive of Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile was floated on the stock exchange in 2004 for £500m, then sold to NTL in 2006 for £1bn.

He left Virgin Mobile in 2006.

Orange

Alexander became Chief Executive of Orange UK in January 2008. He brought with him a plan to turn around the business and "put the sparkle back into Orange". This plan included halting the outsourcing of customer service staff to India and bringing them back to the UK, he invested in the retail estate, refitting stores to a high standard and expanding the estate, improving the performance of both the mobile and fixed networks and finally, refreshing the Orange brand with the "together we can do more" campaign.

EE

In September 2009, T-Mobile decided to merge its UK operations with Orange UK to become EE Limited. He became the first Chief Executive in 2010.[4] EE at the time had 28m customers. EE is headquartered in Hertfordshire. Richard Moat, the former Chief Executive of T-Mobile UK, became Chief Operation Officer of EE.

Personal life

Alexander is married with two children.

References

1. Companies House
2. Millfiield
3. Independent August 2008
4. Telegraph September 2009