She inherited a good hand with good fundamentals in place
In the long arc of British telecommunications, Allison Kirkby's first two years as BT's chief executive represent a moment of genuine but contested renewal — an 80% share price rise that flatters both her leadership and the groundwork laid before she arrived. The story of BT is, in this sense, a familiar human one: the difficulty of assigning credit when fortune, inheritance, and effort are so thoroughly entangled. What is clear is that the harder work — unlocking the buried value of Openreach, navigating a shrinking workforce, and holding ground against resurgent rivals — still lies ahead.
- BT's share price has surged 80% under Kirkby, but the gain traces back to a depressed starting point and foundations her predecessor spent years painfully laying.
- The company is shedding 40% of its workforce by 2030 as AI and a maturing fibre network make tens of thousands of roles redundant — a human cost largely absent from the headline numbers.
- Openreach, BT's infrastructure crown jewel, is haemorrhaging broadband customers to cheaper rivals at a rate of nearly a million a year, threatening the very asset analysts value at £30 billion.
- A strategic brand reversal — abandoning EE in favour of relaunching BT, complete with Euro 2028 sponsorship — has drawn scepticism, even as experts argue the emotional logic is sound.
- The long-circling question of whether Openreach should be separated from BT may finally become answerable by 2030, when pension obligations shrink enough to make the arithmetic viable.
Allison Kirkby arrived at BT two years ago and found the share price climbing — up 80% since she took the helm, earning her a £5.6 million pay package, the largest for a BT chief executive in over a decade. She is the company's first female CEO, a Glaswegian who came via Telia in Sweden, and she recently resolved one of BT's oldest headaches by completing the exit from its struggling international division — a wound that had festered since the BT Italia scandal wiped more than £8 billion from the company's value a decade ago.
Yet the question that shadows her tenure is one of authorship. Her predecessor, Philip Jansen, governed under wartime conditions: cutting the dividend for only the third time in BT's history to fund a national fibre rollout, surviving a pandemic and the company's first strike in 35 years, and selling off BT Sport. A former senior executive offered a verdict that captures the ambiguity well — Kirkby inherited strong fundamentals, but has also been a genuine driving force. The foundations were already being poured when she arrived.
That infrastructure investment is now bearing fruit. Full-fibre broadband covers more than two-thirds of the UK, and BT projects £3 billion in annual free cashflow by decade's end. Kirkby has raised the cost-savings target to £3.7 billion and is overseeing a workforce reduction of roughly 40%, down to 75,000 employees by 2030, driven by AI deployment and a network that needs fewer engineers to maintain.
The competitive picture is less comfortable. Vodafone, newly merged with Three, has overtaken EE as the UK's largest mobile operator. BT's total revenues fell 3% last year. Openreach lost 825,000 broadband customers to discounting rivals and expects to lose another 800,000 this year — part of a five-year total approaching 3.2 million. Meanwhile, BT made a conspicuous strategic reversal, abandoning plans to retire its own brand in favour of EE, then relaunching BT as a consumer flagship with Euro 2028 sponsorship. The flip drew scepticism, though analysts note that BT carries a cultural weight in Britain that EE, primarily a mobile brand, simply cannot replicate.
The deeper frustration Kirkby has voiced is structural: Openreach, which analysts at New Street Research value at £30 billion, is invisible inside BT's £19 billion market capitalisation. The idea of separating or selling Openreach has always foundered on the company's enormous pension obligations — but by 2030, as that scheme's membership shrinks through age, the arithmetic may finally shift. If it does, Kirkby could unlock value that has eluded every predecessor. The company's chair once invoked the Scottish word 'thrawn' — stubborn, hard to move — to describe the challenges he is drawn to. Kirkby will need to embody exactly that quality to see it through.
Allison Kirkby arrived at BT's top job more than two years ago and found herself riding a wave. The company's share price has climbed 80% since she became the telecoms giant's first female chief executive, a performance that earned her a pay package worth £5.6 million last year—the largest compensation for a BT boss in over a decade. The numbers look clean, the trajectory upward. But beneath the headline gains lies a more complicated story about who deserves credit for the turnaround, and what challenges still lie ahead.
The 58-year-old Glaswegian came to BT from Telia, the Swedish telecoms company where she served as chief executive after joining BT's board in 2019. Last week she won fresh plaudits for finally resolving one of the company's longest-running headaches: its struggling international division. That division has weighed on BT for years, ever since a scandal at BT Italia erased more than £8 billion from the company's market value a decade ago and ultimately cost her predecessor, Gavin Patterson, his job. The exit, framed as a move to make BT a "national champion" focused on the UK, has been grinding forward in fits and starts since then.
Yet the real question hanging over Kirkby's tenure is how much of the current recovery she actually engineered, and how much she inherited. Her predecessor, Philip Jansen, operated under wartime conditions. He cut the dividend for only the third time in BT's history to fund the massive national broadband infrastructure upgrade. He navigated a pandemic, the company's first national strike in 35 years, and orchestrated brutal staff and cost reductions. He also sold off BT Sport, the expensive pay-TV business that had become a drag on resources. One former senior executive at the company put it plainly: "I think she inherited a good hand with a lot of good fundamentals in place; some might say she has been a lucky general, but she has also been a driving force." The assessment captures the ambiguity—Kirkby is credited as smart and no-nonsense, but the foundations were already being poured when she arrived.
The infrastructure investment that consumed so much of Jansen's tenure is now bearing fruit. Full-fibre broadband now covers more than two-thirds of the UK, and BT projects it could generate £3 billion in annual free cashflow by the end of the decade. The company is also planning to shrink its workforce by about 40 percent to roughly 75,000 employees by 2030, driven by AI deployment and fewer engineers needed as the network matures. Kirkby recently raised the company's cost-savings target from £3 billion to £3.7 billion, signaling aggressive efficiency measures ahead.
But the competitive landscape is shifting. Vodafone, after merging with Three to create VodafoneThree, has overtaken EE as the UK's largest mobile operator and seen its market value surge by a quarter over the past year. BT's total revenues declined 3 percent last year, and its shares have fallen more than 3 percent over the same period—a reminder that the 80 percent gain came from a depressed starting point. The company also made a confusing strategic U-turn, abandoning plans to retire the BT brand in favor of EE, then relaunching BT as a flagship consumer brand with sponsorship of Euro 2028 and a new BT Mobile service. The move, unveiled at Wembley in May, has drawn skepticism about the flip-flopping, though branding experts note the logic is sound: BT remains emotionally embedded in British culture in ways EE, primarily a mobile brand, is not.
One bright spot: BT's consumer operations—EE, broadband, mobile, and television—showed subscriber growth for the first time in eight years. But the company's infrastructure arm, Openreach, tells a grimmer story. It lost 825,000 broadband customers last year to heavily discounting competitors known as "alt-nets," and is forecasting another 800,000 losses this year. Over a five-year period, the total will reach 3.2 million customers, nearly 16 percent of Openreach's current base of 21 million. The losses are expected to peak and decline to 288,000 annually by 2030, but the damage is real and ongoing.
Kirkby has been vocal about a deeper frustration: Openreach's true value is not reflected in BT's £19 billion market valuation. Analysts at New Street Research estimate Openreach alone is worth £30 billion. By 2030, when Openreach reaches 30 million homes with full-fibre coverage, that value gap could become impossible to ignore. The question of whether BT might eventually separate or sell Openreach has circulated for years, always dismissed as too complex—largely because of the company's massive pension obligations, which consume hundreds of millions annually. But one insider suggests that by 2030, as the pension scheme's membership shrinks due to age (it closed to new entrants in 2001), the arithmetic could finally work. If so, Kirkby may have the chance to unlock value that has eluded her predecessors.
The company's chair, Adam Crozier, another Scot who has led Royal Mail and ITV, once described his attraction to intractable challenges using the Scottish word "thrawn"—meaning difficult, stubborn, hard to move. To realize her ambitions at BT, Kirkby will need to be exactly that.
Citas Notables
She inherited a good hand with a lot of good fundamentals in place; some might say she has been a lucky general, but she has also been a driving force.— Former senior BT executive
The rationale behind it is sensible. BT is emotionally hard-wired into our culture; EE has only delivered in the mobile space really.— Polly Hopkins, UK managing director of branding agency Elmwood London, on BT's brand relaunch
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
The share price is up 80 percent. That's the headline everyone sees. But you're suggesting the real work happened before she arrived?
Not entirely. But yes—Jansen made the hard calls. He cut the dividend, which was politically brutal for a company like BT. He sold BT Sport. He navigated strikes and a pandemic while pouring billions into fiber. By the time Kirkby arrived, the infrastructure was being built. She inherited momentum.
So what's her contribution, then? Why does she deserve the £5.6 million?
She's been decisive about what comes next. The international exit, the cost-cutting targets, the brand strategy. She's also vocal about the Openreach problem—that the market doesn't see the real value of what BT owns. That's leadership, even if the foundation was laid before her.
The Openreach situation sounds like the real story. A £30 billion asset hiding inside a £19 billion company.
Exactly. And it's been unsolvable because of the pension scheme. But by 2030, that constraint loosens. If Kirkby can unlock that value—through a sale, a separation, something—she becomes the CEO who finally solved it. That's legacy-making stuff.
But she's also losing hundreds of thousands of broadband customers to competitors.
Yes. Openreach is being undercut by cheaper rivals. The losses are real. But they're expected to peak and decline. It's a managed retreat, not a collapse. The question is whether she can stabilize it while the fiber build completes and the value becomes undeniable.