Telstra's Mexican-American chief executive Sol Trujillo was battling racism as he attempted to make Australia's largest telecoms company more competitive, his chairman Don McGauchie said yesterday.
Trujillo took over Telstra in July and has come under fire for installing an outspoken trio of US executives in key positions who have been nicknamed "The Three Amigos" in the markets and media.
McGauchie labeled the characterization offensive and said Trujillo, the former chief of French-owned telecoms firm Orange, had probably not realized that heading Telstra would be "like living in a goldfish bowl."
"I found this slight element of racism in the press comments that have been made around Sol to be quite offensive quite frankly," McGauchie told Channel Nine.
Pressed on the issue, McGauchie said there was a big anti-American element to comments that focused on Trujillo's ethnic background and accused the media of "behaving very badly."
He said that Telstra would be scouring the world to recruit more "international standard executives," whatever their respective background.
"Telstra has never really operated in a highly competitive environment in the past -- we need people who have done that," he said.
McGauchie said a strategic review to be made by Trujillo in the middle of next month was the most important issue that the company had faced in many years.
He refused to say whether the review would include significant job losses among Telstra's 40,000 staff.
"There will be some big numbers in what we can do in terms of cost reduction, there will be some big numbers in terms of what we think we can do, what will be required in capital investment," he said. "We think there is a real possibility here of us being a growth story, if we can get on top of it."
McGauchie said the government had to relax regulatory controls on Telstra if it wanted to sell its remaining 51.8 percent stake in Telstra by its timetable of late next year.
"If we get the right regulatory decisions ... if we get clarity," he said. "Shareholders need some certainty and that can be done, well within the capacity of this to be delivered and to see a very successful sale."
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