BT jobs axe falls on its UK IT boss

The head of BT's troubled IT services arm is reported to have left his job after less than a year at the UK helm.



Royston Hoggarth, chief executive of Global Services UK, followed in the footsteps of many of BT's contractors and managers last week when he was reportedly served his notice.



The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail newspapers both reported that no terms of severance were disclosed for Mr Hoggarth, whose annual salary last year, including benefits, was £2.9million.



His departure is BT's highest profile since his predecessor Francois Barrault was ousted in 2008 after it emerged the profitability of key IT contracts had been grossly overestimated.



Hoggarth, who joined BT from Cable & Wireless, was fired a warning shot in May this year, when his boss told investors he was "putting a new management team in place" at Global Services.



Speaking at the time to BT's shareholder magazine Forward, Ian Livingstone said the move was part of a multi-pronged response to the failure of the IT services unit to cut costs.



Alongside the management change, he said addressing the division's cost base and lowering the profitability forecasts of its major IT agreements would return it to a position for growth.



Since then Global Services in the UK has announced it will boost its cashflow by shedding 20,000 contract positions by 2010.



The announcement came after BT reported the "unacceptable performance" of Global Services drained its overall business to a pre-tax loss of £134m, compared with a £2bn profit a year earlier.



On the back of the trading update, BT's share price plummeted to its lowest value since it was privatised back in 1984, although it has seen a partial recovery since the low in the spring.



BT Global Services UK is now under the command of Mark Quartermaine, who has stepped up from the unit's public services business to replace Mr Hoggarth.