Re: now works for Huawei as their CTO
I absolutely agree that it's in Huawei's best interest to "take care" of people who may have smiled kindly on them in the past. People who were in influential positions when multi-billion pound deals were decided.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that nothing was "promised" ahead of time. By employing a former senior executive at a service provider, in a position where he has to do little or no work, for a salary that most of us would dream of, Huawei makes it easier for influential decision makers in future customers to "smile kindly" on Huawei.
I'm also aware that this is exactly the kind of thing that UK and US companies did for decades.
Senior executives usually have a "non-compete" clause in their contracts, and that's one reason they tend to receive huge payouts if they leave their positions (regardless of the reason). But as far as I can tell they do not seem to have a clause that prevents them working for a company that they may have been able to "do a favor" for in their previous position. By the way, it's not just Bross and BT. Look at Ben Verwaayen. Lucent to BT then back to Alcatel-Lucent. In that period Lucent was, and continues to be a major supplier to BT.
And what about ex-BT Retail CTO Stratis Scleparis moving to Phorm? Just after he'd got BT to agree to deploy the technology?
I suppose the question is, do we really want corruption to be an acceptable business practice? I mean...there are laws against it, just like there were "laws" against a lot of stuff the banks did in the past few decades or so.
I get the impression that UK and US equipment companies are keenly aware of the boundaries these days. They are no more or less "moral" than Chinese companies - they're just more afraid of being caught :-)
BT doesn't seem to be bothered about either being caught, or being perceived to be enganged in dubious relationships.