Peter Erskine is to step down from his current role as head of Telefonica's European business, presumably to spend more time with the £12m he's reckoned to have made out of the O2 sale, though he'll remain on the Telefonica board.

Erskine became CEO of O2 in 2001 and has been credited with turning a chunk of ageing telco, as the company was when it was sliced off BT, into a technology company which can count the iPhone amongst its assets. Not to mention one that was successfully sold for almost £18bn.

Since then he's been responsible for Telefonica's European operations outside Spain, though the last 12 months has not been great for O2 so a change of leadership makes a certain amount of sense.

Matthew Key, current chief executive of O2's British business will take over the European role at the end of January. ®

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