Schulman’s knife: BT procurement star looks Verizon-bound, supporting massive ‘turnaround’
Joe Purnell and Richard Agnew2026-02-02T17:19:00
In-depth: Verizon seems to be adding another European Telco Galactico to its ranks, tapping BT Sourced founder Cyril Pourrat to spearhead a massive efficiency drive. New CEO Dan Schulman is targeting rapid elimination of $4bn in capex and $5bn in opex, and deploy automation at scale. Pourrat offers battle-tested digital procurement strategies to a US-supersize turnaround story…
This article includes:
- Themes: AI and automation; Capital expenditure (capex) reduction; Churn reduction; Cost-reduction programme; Digital procurement; Efficiency-pathfinding; Fibre infrastructure; Operating expenses (opex) savings; Procurement and supply chain management (SCM); Strategic partnerships; Turnaround strategy.
- Events: FY25 results presentation; FY26 strategy.
- People: Cyril Pourrat; Dan Schulman; Hans Vestberg; Rima Qureshi; Ronan Dunne; Tony Skiadas; Vittorio Colao; Yago Tenorio.
- Geographic: Europe; UK; US.
- Organisations: AT&T; BT Group; BT Sourced; Deutsche Telekom; Ericsson; Frontier Communications; Orange; PayPal; Sprint; stc; T-Mobile US; Telefónica Group; Verizon; Vodafone Group; VodafoneThree.