Sidecut Reports

You can spin the replacement of former Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff any way you want — the Clearwire press release says “Clearwire Expands Executive Leadership Team” — but when you bump your top guy out of the chair, unless it’s for someone who hits home runs like a Steve Jobs or a Manny Ramirez, there’s a reason why, and it usually relates to something not going quite the way it should.

It may be true that incoming CEO William Morrow, a 49-year-old Vodafone veteran, has a resume dipped much deeper in telecom experience than that of the outgoing 40-year-old Wolff, and that type of experience is needed now that Clearwire is out of its merger activities and into market-launching blocking and tackling. Clearwire board member Peter Currie, in a phone interview Monday, said that while Wolff was by background a lawyer “and one of the best deal guys in telecom,” Wolff himself realized that Clearwire needed more leadership — and that the “only way to get someone of [Morrow’s] caliber was to make him CEO” — so according to Currie, Wolff willingly gave up the title to become “co-chairman” (which is a title of dubious power when the other co-chair is a guy named Craig McCaw).

But that’s spin. The reality is, nobody (usually) gives up the CEO chair willingly, and given the massive write-downs taken by Clearwire partners lately, there was probably not a lot of resistance at the board level to a decision to make a change at the top.

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