Cosmote's executive takes over Zapp CEO role

Cosmote telecom carrier said Stefanos Theocharopoulos, CEO of the mobile telecom carrier will assume the role of chairman and chief executive of Telemobil SA (Zapp), while continuing with his responsabilities. Spyridon Spyropoulos, external affairs director of Cosmote Romania will also take on the role of COO of Zapp. Chris Bataillard has filled the CEO position at Zapp for the past 2 years.

Theocharopoulos (photo) has been the CEO of Cosmote since January 2008, and throughout this year, he has taken up the managing director position at Germanos Telecom Romania.

Stefanos Theocharopoulos joined OTE group in 2002 and served since 2006 as business development executive director at OTEGlobe, member of OTE Group. Prior to joining the Greek-based telecom group, Theocharopoulos held several management positions in companies such as O2 Germany, Dutchtone Netherlands, Vodafone Greece, Fujitsu Telecom Research Center UK and Ericsson Hellas/Greece.

With an extensive 36-year experience in the telecommunication industry, Spyridon Spyropoulos is currently external affairs director at Cosmote Romania, and is in charge of the following lines of business: interconnectivity, roaming and relation with market regulators. Before Cosmote, Spyropoulos served as managing director of Cosmorom and chief technical officer (CTO) at Romtelecom S.A.

He joined OTE Group in 1975 and held various roles in technical division, interconnectivity, regulation, development and management.Earlier this month, Michael Tsamaz, deputy director of Cosmote group, said the completion of Zapp deal would heat up the competition in the market.