Ben Verwaayen emerged from the swimming pool of his home in Provence yesterday to take up the challenge of transforming Alcatel-Lucent, the troubled telecommunications giant, into a streamlined service provider.

After surprising the City when he quit BT at the end of May, the Dutchman was named chief executive of the loss-making group formed in 2006 from the merger of Alcatel, of France, and Lucent, of the United States.

Analysts said that Mr Verwaayen, 56, would be in the driving seat despite the appointment of Philippe Camus, formerly chief executive of EADS, the European aerospace and defence group, as chairman.

The architect of BT's revival faces a tough ride at a company in the throes of cutting 16,000 jobs amid evidence that Lucent's portfolio was oversold and that its customers will continue to hold down investment.

He told Le Monde that after three months swimming at his house in the Lubéron, he was ready for the challenge of heading a company also handicapped by mutual distrust between its French and American employees.

Mr Verwaayen said that he aimed to turn Alcatel-Lucent from a “product-orientated business into a service-orientated business”. His focus is likely to be on the management of fixed and mobile networks in an attempt to generate stable revenue to offset falling product sales.

Mr Verwaayen will receive a basic salary of €1.2 million (£975,000) a year, as well as a performance-related bonus of up to €1.8 million. He will also receive 2.25 million shares and options. The appointment comes after the departure in July of Pat Russo as chief executive and Serge Tchuruk as chairman, amid investor fury over a tie-up that suffered from aggressive price-cutting by competitors in a shrinking market. Alcatel-Lucent's share value has slumped by 60 per cent since the mergerm, with six successive quarterly losses, the latest of €1.1 billion.

Alexander Peterc, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas in Paris, said: “There is no magic recipe but the conditions are easier than they were in the beginning. The restructuring plan has been drawn up and the worst is probably behind the company.

“Ben Verwaayen is likely to make some changes to strategy but I don't expect him to throw it out of the window and start again. I don't think there will be a clean break.”

C.V.

Born: February 11, 1952, in Driebergen, the Netherlands

1975-88 Worked for ITT Corporation, later acquired by Alcatel

1988-97 Director of KPN, the Dutch telecom group

1997-2002 Vice-chairman of Lucent Technologies

2002-08 Chief executive of BT, stepping down on May 31

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