Nationwide picks BT Openreach boss Joe Garner as new chief executive

Nationwide, Britain’s biggest building society, has dug deep to find its next chief executive.

It has chosen Joe Garner, current chief executive of BT’s Openreach network business, to replace Graham Beale from next spring.

Garner only moved to Openreach in February last year and has run the operations side which looks after BT’s ducts and cables through a tense period under which the telecoms giant has been subject to intense pressure to spin the business off.

Rivals like Sky and TalkTalk have accused it of poor service and delays in installation when they order new broadband lines for their customers.

Before Openreach, Garner’s background was in retail banking with his previous role as deputy chief executive of HSBC UK.