Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigns

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has left, with chief financial officer Michael Venter stepping in as her interim replacement.

Bayer Rosmarin has been under increasing pressure since the carrier’s extended November 8 outage, and the company's appearance before a senate committee late last week.

Singtel announced Bayer Rosmarin's departure in a filing to the Singapore Stock Exchange [pdf].

“On Friday I had the opportunity to appear before the senate to expand on the cause of the network outage and how Optus recovered and responded,” she said in the statement. 

“I was also able to communicate Optus’ commitment to restore trust and continue to serve customers. Having now had time for some personal reflection, I have come to the decision that my resignation is in the best interest of Optus moving forward."

Optus and Singtel were at odds about the cause of the outage, with Optus’ attribution of the issue as “bad router data” from the Singtel Internet Exchange later disputed by Singtel.

Singtel has also announced that it has recruited Peter Kaliaropoulos to fill the newly-created role of chief operating officer (COO), reporting to Venter.

Kaliaropoulos was most recently a Singapore-based consultant, and has previously been managing director of Optus Business. He will join Optus on November 22.