T-Mobile hires new executive to plan how Sprint will fit into merged company

T-Mobile has added to its executive ranks by creating a new post overseeing the company’s integration of Sprint as they seek federal approval to merge.

Sunit Patel joined T-Mobile as executive vice president, merger and integration lead, T-Mobile said Monday. He starts Oct. 1.

“You’re going to want to keep an eye on him,” said Berge Ayvazian, a principal consultant at Wireless 20/20.

Ayvazian said he expects Patel to play a big role in how Sprint employees, buildings and other infrastructure “survive the merger, including Kansas City.”

Integrating Sprint into T-Mobile means reconciling their competing networks of retail stores, setting team assignments for employees and establishing locations of various operations — whether in T-Mobile’s headquarters in Bellevue, Wash., Sprint’s headquarters in Overland Park, Sprint’s Reston, Va., offices or elsewhere.

Ayvazian said T-Mobile turned to Patel as an outsider, as “somebody on neither side,” in what amounts to a competition for positions up and down the wireless company after the merger, assuming regulators approve the companies’ plans to combine.

Earlier this year, Sprint CEO Michel Combes had encouraged Sprint employees during large rallies at several Sprint locations to be proud of their achievements and to “get and seize” opportunities the merger provides.

The two wireless companies agreed in April to a $26 billion buyout of Sprint with plans to combine their operations under the T-Mobile name and leadership.

Patel’s job will be to lead T-Mobile’s “strategic planning efforts to integrate its business with Sprint as the two companies work through the necessary regulatory reviews and other closing conditions to combine and become the New T-Mobile,” the hiring announcement said.

Patel will report to Mike Sievert, T-Mobile’s president who also has been named president of the merged companies, assuming federal officials approve the companies’ plans. T-Mobile CEO John Legere also has been named CEO of the merged companies.

Hiring Patel will “substantially increase” the likelihood the merger will have a “successful outcome,” T-Mobile said in its announcement.

“We are increasingly optimistic about the path we’re on to create the New T-Mobile and are now looking forward to bringing someone with Sunit’s experience to our team to lead us through the strategic planning for integration of our businesses — one of the most exciting and integral aspects of this merger,” T-Mobile’s Sievert said in the announcement.

Patel had been chief financial officer and executive vice president at CenturyLink. Before that, he held the same role at Level 3 Communications. T-Mobile said those jobs gave Patel experience handling “large-scale strategic transactions.”

This story was originally published September 24, 2018 at 5:03 PM.