Robert Walker Email & Phone Number

25 years commercial and finance experience in the telecoms and financial services sectors. Much of this has been in senior leadership roles: shaping business strategy, negotiating key commercial deals, driving cost saving initiatives and setting, then managing adherence to, multi-£m budgets.Now with TalkTalk for 16 years, my current role is Head of Supplier Strategy. Reporting into the Commercial Director for Supply & Partnerships, my role is to shape TalkTalk's strategy as it embraces a Full Fibre future with services supplied by Openreach and a range of alternative ("Alt-Net") suppliers (my previous role focused on these Alt-Nets).Before this, I held a position, also across the group, as Head of Finance & Commercial for Business Development, establishing new lines of business to monetise TalkTalk's network assets and delivering new strategic partnerships with opportunities for differentiation or cost efficiencies.Prior to this I was Head of Data Products within TalkTalk Business (TTB), responsible in the Indirect channel for: pricing/proposition, in-life product management and pre-sales across Data products (business grade connectivity e.g. leased lines). Before this I was Senior Manager for Commercial Analysis & Pricing after having started in TTB as Trading Strategy Manager for Ethernet. I spent 5 years in TTB in total.My time at TalkTalk began in the Technology business unit and I spent 7 years in various Finance roles. Arriving as TalkTalk launched "free broadband", I came in to set up the management accounting and MI for the then new LLU products and the Next Generation Network they were delivered over. Then as a Finance Business Partner I was involved in the analysis of exchange rollout plans, including leveraging the synergies from the AOL and Tiscali acquisitions. By the time I left the Technology division for TTB, I was Head of Finance, looking after a £100m+ Capex budget and working closely with procurement, we achieved savings of over £30m in my final year in role.I began my career in the financial services sector with M&S Financial Services (now M&S Bank) for 6 years, qualifying as an accountant (CIMA). I worked closely with McKinsey on the business case for launching the M&S Credit Card and Loyalty scheme, which was Europe's largest store-card to credit card migration. I then moved to niche "card" consultancy and over 2 years worked on projects including: Barclaycard/TFL (trial of contactless), Jelmoli (Swiss store-card), Visa Asia Pacific (business simulation, live final in Singapore), AIB & Bank of Ireland.