Ex-Telstra chief Sol Trujillo exits Australia with no plans to return

21 May 2009

Sol Trujillo the combative and controversial ex-Telstra chief executive made a quiet exit from the company several weeks ahead of 30June, the date he was to officially demit office. Trujillo said that since the company had appointed an insider who knew the company and its business there was no need to delay a handover.

David Thodey, the new Telstra chief hosted a low key farewell for Trujillo and his wife in an upstairs suite of Crown Towers hotel in Melbourne last Wednesday night.

Trujillo took an early morning flight out of Australia with no plans to return, on Thursday.

None of the current Telstra board members attended the farewell except for Donald McGauchie, the former chairman who was himself forced to put in his papers two weeks ago. McGauchie had cut short Trujillo's stormy tenure only a few months earlier.

According to industry sources, the absence of Telstra board was evidence of how much it wanted to underline the end of the McGauchie-Trujillo era and the beginning the new Catherine Livingstone-Thodey era.

They point out that it is also evidence of the extent to which the political and corporate mood had soured since the American-born Trujillo took over the reins of the company in mid-2005.
 
The former chairman spoke approvingly of Trujillo's successes in bringing about a cultural transition in the company and delivering the Next G wireless service. Many of the Telstra chief's former direct reports, including David Thodey spoke in a similar vein about his impact on them and the company.