Ghana's Expresso Telecom has replaced their Managing Director after just months of penetrating the country through the buyout of Kasapa Telecom Limited. Just before Kasapa was rebranded, the Managing Director Bob Palitz resigned and was replaced by Hisham Ayoub. Sources within Expresso have said that Ayoub has been replaced due to poor performance. The new Managing Director is Al-Ameer Ahmed Al-Ameer Yousef, which was quietly put in while his counterpart left. It is not yet confirmed in what capacity Ayoub will be serving within the company. Under Ayoub subscriptions fell from 400,000 to just over 200,000, despite many changes implemented by Ayoub. Ayoub had introduced the Clig moden, which is one of the most competitive modems on the market in terms of prices, speed and tariff. Sources say the new Managing Director is not doing much better, but they are optimistic.“It looks like Mr. Yousef is going to bring some positive change, but some of the old guys at Expresso have entrenched themselves into their positions through all kinds of means so I am not too sure if he will succeed,” the source said. The source also mentioned Ayoub had nt only lst subscriptions, but also fired many valuable employees including top management staff, some of which have found new careers with Enterprise Insurance Company Limited. Ever since the buyout, Expresso has steadily lost its clientele. “As we speak now all the computers at the High Street branch of the Expresso have all broken down for months now and staff there are not able to get into the company's data system to enter daily transaction so the manager there records all transactions in books and sends them to the Dansoman branch every day for entry. “Management is not thinking about how to fix all these challenges to bring us back on track to get customers and make some money but they are quick to write query letters to customer service staff and are rather running quizzes for customer service staff every week as if the customers service staff are the problems,” the source said. Expresso is the only CDMA operator in Ghana and the smallest operator based on subscriptions. They have roughly 204,000 subscribers, which is less than one percent of the market share. BM
