Telekom Austria today announced the unexpected resignation of its CEO Hannes Ametsreiter, who will leave the company at the end of July.

Ametsreiter had a contract up to the end of 2016 with the option to extend it by a further two years, and the move has come as a surprise within the company, according to Reuters.

A source speculates that Ametsreiter has been offered another position, but no other details are known at this stage.

He has been at Telekom Austria for 19 years in various positions, and was named CEO in 2009, making him the longest serving chief executive since the company’s IPO 15 years ago.

Ametsreiter successfully led the merger of the group’s fixed and mobile businesses to launch A1 Telekom Austria, and has been integral to the company’s expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.

“It’s been a great honour that I have been allowed to contribute to shaping two incredibly exciting decades of telecommunications in Austria,” said Ametsreiter in a statement. “After so many years a farewell is of course hard, but the group is in a great shape as a leading convergent communications provider.”

Telekom Austria, 60 per cent owned by Carlos Slim’s America Movil, appointed Alejandro Plater as COO and deputy CEO in March, who will assume the position in the interim if a successor is not appointed by the end of July.

Reuters reports Telekom Austria’s supervisory board will meet to discuss Ametsreiter’s successor on 24 July, and a source in the body states the resignation did not come as a result of pressure from America Movil.

“On behalf of the supervisory board, I would like to express our thanks to Hannes Ametsreiter for running the business through quite challenging times, also in the transition phase of Telekom Austria Group becoming an affiliate of América Movil,” added Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer, chairman of the supervisory board and Telekom Austria Group.