Telecom New Zealand, so far unable to off-load its troubled Australian operations, AAPT, has moved to restructure the organisation resulting in the departure of local Chief Executive Jon Stretch.

He will leave the group at the end of this month and the business will be split into two divisions based on customer segmentation.

The restructure will see consumer and SMB business in one division with Enterprise business making up the other. The two parts will be run by Telecom NZ’s CFO Marko Bogoievski (mass market) and Chief IT services officer, Mark Ratcliffe (Enterprise).

Telecom NZ Chief Executive, Theresa Gattung, said the changes will help the company better focus on the divergent needs of these two customer groups while leveraging investments made in provisioning, billing, customer care and operational support systems.

In the consumer/SMB space the group will attempt to focus on delivering a “tighter core group of bundled services with significantly lower cost”. While in the Enterprise customers will benefit from having a single focused group looking after their needs.

Telecom NZ recently slashed almost $1 billion of its book value of AAPT and continues in talks “with a number of parties about a possible sale or merger” according to Gattung.