AT&T chief financial officer Pascal Desroches will retire on 31 December after more than five years in the role, bringing a nearly 40-year finance career to a close. Jennifer Biry, a long-serving AT&T finance executive and former chief financial officer and chief operating officer at McAfee, will succeed him on 1 January 2027.
Biry was appointed deputy CFO in July as part of the planned transition. Desroches became AT&T’s finance chief in 2021, at a pivotal point for the telecommunications group.
During his tenure, AT&T separated DirecTV, sold WarnerMedia and reduced its dividend as it redirected the business towards telecoms infrastructure, including 5G and fibre networks.
Desroches said the decision to sell the media assets quickly proved particularly important as the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate rises in 2022 later affected the value of such deals.
“Had we not done it as early as we did, proceeds would have been less, and the amount that we have to invest back into businesses would have been less,” he said. “That’s probably the thing I am most proud of. We didn’t hesitate.”
AT&T invested more than $150 billion in wireless and wireline networks, including spectrum, during much of Desroches’s tenure. At the same time, the company pursued an aggressive plan to reduce debt.
The annual dividend was cut from more than $15 billion in 2020 to about $8 billion, freeing cash for investment and debt reduction. AT&T generated more than $16 billion in free cash flow last year and invested more than $22 billion in the business.
Desroches said the company had to protect its capital spending programme while adapting its plans when circumstances changed. “You can’t save your way to prosperity,” he said.
AT&T’s shares have returned roughly 65 per cent over five years and nearly 95 per cent over three years, including dividends. The company’s performance over the three-year period exceeded that of the S&P 500.
Pascal Desroches’s career in finance
Born in Haiti and raised in Queens, New York, after his family moved to the US when he was five, Desroches studied at St John’s University before completing an MBA at Columbia Business School.
He began his career at KPMG, where Lemar Swinney, the first Black partner in the firm’s New York office, became a mentor and sponsor. Desroches later held senior finance roles at Time Warner, including executive vice-president and CFO of WarnerMedia, CFO of Turner Broadcasting and global controller of Time Warner.
The late Time Warner chief executive Dick Parsons was another important influence. Desroches said Parsons taught him to “be comfortable operating in ambiguity” and to “leave your door open for bad news”.
He has also credited AT&T chief executive John Stankey with placing a strong emphasis on communication, including being open about areas where the company still needed to improve. Stankey has described Desroches as an “exceptional partner and a principled leader”.
Desroches said his background had made his rise to the top of corporate finance difficult to imagine. “There weren’t a lot of people who looked like me in these jobs,” he said, adding that he hoped others would see his career as a route they could follow.
Although he is leaving AT&T, Desroches does not intend to withdraw completely from corporate life. He sits on the board of Honeywell Aerospace, where he chairs the audit committee, and expects to join one or two further boards or take on advisory work.
His advice to finance professionals is to view a career as “a marathon, not a sprint”. He said maintaining time for sleep, exercise, healthy eating, family and enjoyment was essential to sustaining a long working life.
“If you don’t make time for things that bring you joy, that replenish you, you’re not going to be your optimal self,” he said.
