Go away from the state monopoly

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01 April 2008

Newly privatised Maltacom decided to adopt a unified brand to show customers and employees that four separate divisions had become one. Alan Burkitt-Gray interviews CEO David Kay

David Kay: we had to stop fighting between ourselves and work under one banner

Linda Garcia: we said go with Go. It was a fantastic name

Go has added TV to its offer, to compete with the cable operator

Take a government-run phone company, privatise it, and then let it compete in the market against a bunch of dynamic newcomers. How does it survive?
That was the challenge faced by David Kay when he became CEO of Maltacom in June 2006. The government of Malta — the Mediterranean island that is one of the EU's smallest member states — sold a 60% stake in the company to Dubai Holdings, with 40% floated on the Malta stock exchange.
But the newly independent Maltacom had to do more that to compete against a cable operator that is also offering fixed telephony, in a market where customers are anyway starting to prefer to...

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