Telefonica Deutschland said Markus Haas, its chief operating officer and a long-serving Telefonica exec, will take over as CEO on 1 January 2017.

Current chief Thorsten Dirks will support the management team until the end of Q1 2017 “to ensure a smooth transition”. Dirks was previously CEO of E-Plus, joining Telefonica Deutschland when the two companies merged.

The German operator recently agreed to Dirks’ request for an early termination of his contract, which was meant to run until September 2017. No reason was given for his early departure.

German airline Lufthansa subsequently appointed Dirks as CEO of its low-cost arm, Eurowings.

Haas will work in “close cooperation” with Rachel Empey, chief financial and strategy officer. In a statement, the operator explained that both led Telefonica Deutschland through a successful IPO, merger with E-Plus Group, and the subsequent integration.

Haas’ term runs to 31 December 2019, and Empey’s until 31 December 2018.

In addition to her current responsibilities, Empey will be responsible for transformation and integration, business intelligence, innovation and Telefonica Next (a spin-off of Telefonica Deutschland working on big data analytics and IoT).

Eva Castillo Sanz, chair of the supervisory board, said the two “have proved to be a very strong leadership team in the past years” and said “the internal succession is a clear signal of continuity for our shareholders, employees and business partners in the execution of the integration and transformation processes”.