The Squiz

It’s been speculated about on the business pages since the Optus mega network outage nearly 2 weeks ago, and yesterday, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin put an end to the rumours… She announced her time at the helm of the nation’s #2 telco is over, with the company’s chief financial officer, Michael Venter, stepping in as interim CEO shoes as the company searches for a new boss. Yesterday, Bayer Rosmarin said after “some personal reflection” following her Senate Committee appearance on Friday, she decided her departure “is in the best interest of Optus moving forward”.

It’s been a big 13 months at Optus… 

Hasn’t it just. It started in September last year when the company was dealing with the fallout from a big cyberattack – it affected up to 9.7 million current and former customers and was later named one of the worst data breaches in Australian history. Bayer Rosmarin, who began as the company’s chief executive in April 2020, described it at the time as a sophisticated attack, but Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil disagreed – she said Optus “left the window open”. So, with the telco still dealing with that fallout, the company’s more than 10 million customers and government stakeholders weren’t so forgiving of this month’s 13-hour phone/internet blackout – or how long it took for Bayer Rosmarin and Co. to tell them what was going on. Talk’s now turning to who might replace her, with Gladys Berejiklian one name being floated…

It’s hard to hold down a high-profile job these days… 

Yeah, good shout… Over at the social platform X (formerly Twitter), CEO Linda Yaccarino is being urged to resign. That’s after her boss Elon Musk called an antisemitic conspiracy doing the rounds on the platform the “actual truth” last week, which had the White House accusing him of spreading “a hideous lie” and more companies pausing their ads on X. Yaccarino has so far resisted the calls to resign, saying X is “extremely clear” in its fight against antisemitism. Still, reports say multiple marketing executives have told her she’s risking damage to her reputation by staying. And at OpenAI (aka the company behind ChatGPT), ex-boss/founder Sam Altman was said to be negotiating a return after his shock firing on Friday. But those rumours were also put to bed yesterday, with the OpenAI board naming an interim CEO and Altman offered a new AI leadership gig at Microsoft.