Axiata Group named new CEOs for three of its operating companies as well as the head of a newly created regional unit as part of its strategy to strengthen its corporate headquarters to manage and accelerate transformation to a regional digital company.

Shazalli Ramly, currently CEO of Celcom in Malaysia, was appointed to the newly created role of CEO for Southeast Asia, effective 1 September.

Ramly, who has been with Celcom for 11 years, will be responsible for the group’s Southeast Asia operations and will continue to be a member of the Celcom board. He will also be appointed to three other boards of Axiata’s operating companies.

Michael Kuehner, who was CEO of Robi in Bangladesh from 2009 to 2013, will take over as CEO of Celcom. He is a board member of Robi, Smart and edotco and has more than 30 years of experience in the telecoms industry.

Supun Weerasinghe, CEO of Robi, will become CEO of Dialog in Sri Lanka on 1 January 2017. He will succeed Hans Wijayasuriya, the current CEO of Dialog who took on the expanded role of CEO for South Asia in January. Weerasinghe joined Dialog in 1999 and took the helm at Robi in 2014.

Taking over from Weerasinghe as CEO of Robi effective 1 November is Mahtab Uddin Ahmed. Ahmed joined Robi in 2010 as CFO, a post he held for four years, then served as COO.

Axiata president and group CEO Jamaludin Ibrahim said: “Since Axiata’s formation in April 2008, we have doubled the size of the group’s revenue and market capitalisation, but our past success is not necessarily the recipe for the future. We have now entered into a new growth and transformation phase, while working on short-term challenges facing some of our businesses. We certainly need to critically relook and refresh our management teams across the group.”