Left: Geoff Houston will assume position as LIME Jamaica country manager on January 1, 2009. Right: Phil Green leaves LIME Jamaica at the end of December to go back home.

Even in the midst of its transformation, not everything has changed at the newly branded LIME Jamaica.

The telecommunications company is about to switch bosses again, maintaining its high attrition rate for chief executive officers.

Australian Phil Green - the fourth president in five years - who was brought in last August to put the company back on track to profitability, will leave at the end of December, 16 months after he took the job.

Short assignment

But inside sources say Jamaica was always meant to be a short assignment for Green, whose mandate was to reverse the $2 billion of losses inherited from Rodney Davis.

Green, whose current home is said to be in Indonesia, has a three-year-old son and wants to be with his family, Wednesday Business was told.

"He has been itching to go home," said our source. Green did not respond to requests for comment.

Word of his departure via a stock market filing Tuesday comes just weeks after he announced the rebranding of Cable and Wireless' entire Caribbean operation to LIME, under the regional business model he has crafted and is now executing in the phone company's 13 markets.

Green will also cease to be a board director for the Jamaican operation, but remain chairman of LIME Caribbean and continue to sit on the board of the state owned Trinidad phone company where Cable and Wireless has a minority 49 per cent stake with the Trinidad government holding the other 51 per cent, Wednesday Business.

Jamaican baton

Green passes the Jamaican baton to Geoff Houston who becomes country manager January 1, allowing for a one month transition for the president-designate who has already taken a seat on Lime Jamaica's board, effective Monday.

Houston has worked previously with Errald Miller, who was president up to 2003, and has since had various postings within the British-owned telecoms group, including as head of operations in the Isle of Man. He returned to Jamaica as chief operating officer six months ago.

It's not clear whether Houston was brought back intentionally as Green's successor, though insiders speculate it was likely.

Company spokesman Errol Miller, the vice president in charge of corporate communications, said a statement was pending on the changes, though he did point out that under Green there were signs that the company had been stabilised.

Green steered the company to an operating profit of $629 million in first half year, April to September, compared to a loss of $98 million in the previous period, and he cut net losses from half a billion to $266 million.

The company, however, is far from being out of the woods. The deficit also continued to accumulate, adding a billion dollars to $5.5 billion in six months revenues were basically flat, rising less than $150 million to $11.3 billion, and the competition remains fierce in a market where LIME Jamaica's customer base is a third of chief rival Digicel.

Transformation plan

The transformation plan that Green rolled out for Jamaica includes the total write-off of the mobile infrastructure and the build out of a new 3G network, revised product and services, a refreshed customer service model, an expanded sales network for mobile services, including mobile broadband which is to be announced, plus a remodeling of dealerships and own-operated Lifestyle stores.

Green has given no real timelines on when he expects Jamaica to make its turnaround, but the company's regional model is being built out on a three-to-five-year timeline.

The LIME Jamaica statement issued late Tuesday on the changes said Green will be taking on "several additional non-executive roles for the Cable & Wireless International business", and that he would also remain chairman of Cable & Wireless Macau.

Most difficult time

"Phil took on the Jamaica assignment at a most difficult time in August of 2007 and has worked tirelessly to stabilize and turn around the business. The results of his efforts are clearly demonstrated in the recently released financials for the first half of the current financial year," said Richard Dodd, CEO of LIME Caribbean.

"We always knew that this was a short-term assignment for Phil, and the time has come for him to move on to contribute in other areas and in other ways to the C&W International Group."

lavern.clarke@gleanerjm.com