"Bundling all of our cell-phone subsidiaries into a new holding structure is a logical step in creating a Pan-European mobile telephony carrier that belongs to the world's leading five opera tors in mobile communications," said Ron Sommer, CEO of Deutsche Telekom. Initially, T-Mobile International will encompass the Deutsche Telekom Group's European mobile communications activities. Among these include the subsidiaries T-Mobil (Germany), One2One (United Kingdom) and (Austria) with a combined customer base of 15 million. In addition to these companies, joint ventures in Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia service an other three million cell-phone customers.

Kai-Uwe Ricke, born in 1961, first completed a banking apprenticeship before studying Economics at the European Business School in Germany, France and the USA. Ricke then began his professional career as Assistant to the Board at Bertelsmann AG, in Gutersloh. Later he went on to become Head of Sales and Marketing at a Swedish-based Bertelsmann subsidiary. From 1990 to June 1995, he worked as Managing Director of Talkline Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH and Talkline PS Phone Service GmbH, both based in Elmshorn near Hamburg. Before joining T-Mobil, Ricke was the Managing Director and Board Spokesperson of Talkline GmbH. Since January 1, 1998, Ricke has headed Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobil subsidiary (Deutsche Telekom MobilNet GmbH).

Rene Obermann, born in 1963, started his professional career working as an apprentice at Munich-based BMW AG. He later founded the Munster-based retail firm ABC Telekom, from which Hutchison Mobilfunk GmbH was established in 1991. At the same time, Obermann became Managing Partner of Hutchison Mobilfunk and later was Chairman of the Managing Board from 1993 to 1998. From 1995 to 1996, he was also Chairman of the former "Association of Mobile Communications Service Providers" (VAM - Verband der Anbieter von Mobilfunkdiensten). Since April 1998, he has been Man aging Director, Sales, at T-Mobil (Germany).

Michael Gunther, born in 1944, studied Business Administration at the Uni versities of Berlin and Hamburg. He began his professional career in 1971 with the Philips Group, where he was a business manager in various fields. From 1987 to 1993, he was a board member of Philips Kommunikations Industrie AG in Nuremberg, responsible for controlling, finance, accounting and information technology. In 1993 Gunther joined Deutsche Telekom's Frankfurt/Main-based subsidiary DeTeSystem as Finance Director. In 1996, he accepted a transfer to Deutsche Telekom headquarters in Bonn, where he was responsible for Finance and Controlling within the Business Customer Division until he joined T-Mobil (Germany) in September 1997 as Managing Director of Finance and Controlling.

Deutsche Telekom, with revenues of nearly DM 70 billion (nearly $40 billion) in 1998, is Europe's largest telecommunications company and the third largest carrier worldwide. A total of more than 12 million marketed ISDN channels makes Deutsche Telekom the world leader in ISDN and with more than 4 million T-Online customers, the company is Europe's largest Internet provider. Offering a complete range of products and services, Deutsche Telekom has more than 47 million telephone lines in service and 15 million mobile telephony customers (including majority owned subsidiaries). FMI: .de/international.