KPN boss resigns, claiming family reasons not emergency number outage

By Janene Pieters on June 25, 2019 - 08:23

Maximo Ibarra is resigning as CEO of KPN, the company announced on Tuesday morning. He is leaving the Dutch telecom company because of pressing family matters, KPN said, stressing that his departure has nothing to do with a major outage that left emergency number 1-1-2 unreachable for over three hours on Monday.

Ibarra will be leaving KPN at the end of September. "I regret the timing, but family reasons gave me no choice. I will dedicate myself the coming months to secure a seamless transfer to my successor", the Colombian-Italian man said in a KPN press release.

The CEO will move back to Italy, where he will take up another position. Exactly what this position is, was not announced.

The cause of the KPN outage is not yet clear, though Joost Farwerck of the KPN Board of Management told NOS that it was not caused by a hack. Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus of Justice and Security summoned the company to discuss the course of events and possible solutions on Tuesday.