Sol Trujillo

Sol Trujillo
Born	Solomon Dennis Trujillo (1951-11-17) November 17, 1951 Cheyenne, Wyoming
Nationality
Occupation	Chief Executive Officer
Employer	Telstra
Predecessor	Ziggy Switkowski

Solomon Dennis "Sol" Trujillo (born November 17, 1951 in Cheyenne, Wyoming) is an American businessman. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Telstra, Australia's major telecommunications company.

Career

Trujillo holds a Bachelor of Business degree and an MBA from the University of Wyoming. He began his business career as a business forecaster for Mountain Bell in 1975. He worked as President, chairman and CEO of U S WEST Communications, Inc. from 1995 to 2000. He served as chairman and CEO of Graviton before its closure. His next position was as CEO of Orange SA in 2003, a company on which he had been a board member since 2001. He held that position until Orange was acquired by France Telecom. He was appointed Telstra's Chief Executive Officer on July 1, 2005.

Controversies

• Trujillo on Wikipedia

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, a New York based law firm threatened Wikimedia with legal action for an anonymous edit of the the Solomon Trujillo page on Wikipedia. In particular, the letter demanded that Wikipedia "remove the above language from the article, including all of its history pages, and to permanently block [119.11.111.17] from editing the page". The letter has been posted on Chilling Effects and according to Chilling Effects, under 47 U.S.C. sec. 230(c)(1) Wikipedia can not be held liable for any such posts by its users.

• He categorized the regions that US West serves into gold, silver or bronze and took up to 100 days to service and repair phone connections in the bronze areas only because they were legally required to after 100 days.

• He resigned as CEO of U S WEST, Inc. just before the company became the subject of a federal criminal probe for overstating nearly a billion dollars in profits. He was not charged by the justice department and has denied any knowledge of accounting irregularities.

• Mr Trujillo is Australia's least admired chief executive, according to a business analysts survey by the respected Australian business magazine Business Review Weekly. He has presided over a multi-billion dollar drop in the value of Telstra. Famously, he stated that he was 'proud' of having contributed to the decline in its value.

• Mr Trujillo has received $1.5 million bonus for delivering a transformation plan for Telstra. He has hired management consultants Bain and spent $54 million on their services to do much of the work.

• In 2007 the Telstra Board lead by Mr Trujillo asked shareholders to approve a bonus package for management which would effectively give Mr Trujillo a A$20 million dollar bonus. Over 66% of shareholders voted against the bonus. Despite the opposition of shareholders Mr Trujillo said the board was "disappointed" with the result of the vote and would still issue the bonuses regardless of the wishes of shareholders.

External links

• Telstra biography
• Orange SA biography
• Future in Review biography
• Telstra's new boss article from Dissent magazine, Aug 2005
• Sol Trujillo on the Line SBS Dateline, 20 Sep 2006