Krish takes control

Krish Prabhu is the man.

First of all, you can't beat his timing. Not only does the former VC and Alcatel exec get back into the telecom equipment business just as the wreckage is being cleared away, but his first earnings conference call as the new Tellabs CEO happens to be the one in which the company reports its first profit in two years.

His acquisition of Advanced Fiber Communications last week--just three months after he took the CEO job--was a masterstroke, by most accounts giving Tellabs the better end of the deal. I know there are those who will say the combination is not very synergistic. But this deal occurred just as Verizon Communications was noisily touting the first commercial deployments of AFC's fiber-to-the-premises gear and just after AFC surpassed Alcatel to become the #1 digital loop carrier supplier in North America, leading many to feel that Tellabs got quite a bargain. And when you consider Tellabs' ties to legacy products, a move like this would have been necessary at some point anyway.

At Alcatel, Prabhu showed that he was better at integrating acquisitions than Tellabs has been so far, so it will be interesting to see what else he can do with the company. When he left Alcatel to join Morgenthaler Ventures in 2001, the 46-year old said he wanted to spend more time with his family and that, when his children were a little older, he might be ready to lead a company again. Last week it became clear that the kids are all grown up.

E-mail me at egubbins@primediabusiness.com.