Optus CEO, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, resigned after a countrywide outage that disconnected millions of Australians and a major data breach last year.
Optus' parent company, Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel), confirmed Rosmarin's resignation, citing the network failure. An outage that left nearly half of Australia's 26 million people without phone or internet service for over 12 hours sparked considerable criticism.
Singtel also announced that Chief Financial Officer, Michael Venter, will temporarily assume the position of CEO. The company thanked Rosmarin for her leadership and remarked that she improved Optus' financial performance despite being appointed at the start of the pandemic.
In her official statement, Rosmarin explained that her decision to resign was influenced by personal reflection, particularly after the parliamentary hearing where Optus executives admitted to lacking a contingency plan for an outage of such magnitude. She emphasized that her resignation is in the best interest of Optus as the company seeks to navigate through these challenging times.
