Former PayPal CEO Replaces Vestberg as Verizon's Chief Executive
Dan Schulman, a Verizon board member and the former CEO of PayPal, is replacing Hans Vestberg as Verizon CEO, effective immediately, the company announced Monday. Unlike T-Mobile, which is also going through a CEO transition (see 2509220029), Verizon hadn’t indicated in recent months that change was coming. Mark Bertolini, a Verizon director and the CEO of Oscar Health, was named chairman. Vestberg will stay on as a special adviser for a year, Verizon said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Industry experts said the change was likely tied to Verizon’s performance, particularly in Q3. The carrier reported 51,000 wireless retail postpaid phone net losses in Q2 and warned of problems tied to the government’s cuts to the federal workforce (see 2507210049).
Verizon “has been trading short-term profits for long-term customer growth,” emailed Recon Analytics’ Roger Entner. “At one point, this breaks as you can only wring water from a stone [for] so long.”
Evercore’s Kutgun Maral told investors Monday, “While we don’t believe the shift was due to near-term concerns (2025 financial guidance was reiterated), the Board seems, in our view, focused on driving more significant operational changes, particularly around reaccelerating subscriber growth and market share gains ... Investor sentiment is almost singularly tethered to its postpaid phone subscriber trends, which have remained mute.” The key question is how Schulman “will reimagine Verizon’s growth algorithm,” Maral wrote.
Schulman “is a seasoned and decisive leader with a unique set of experiences, and a proven record of transformative leadership and operational excellence,” Bertolini said in the press release. “He is the right leader to chart Verizon's next phase of increased customer focus and financial growth.” With a network “that is unmatched and with the upcoming close of the Frontier transaction, the Board and Hans discussed that now is the right time for a CEO transition,” Bertolini added.
Schulman has been a member of the board since 2018 and was elected lead independent director in December, Verizon said. He previously held “senior leadership roles” at AT&T, Priceline, Virgin Mobile and American Express.