StarHub chief executive Peter Kaliaropoulos is stepping down at the end of October after a little more than two years in the role. 

Kaliaropoulos cited serious health-related matters of a close family member and said, after 40 years in the industry across multiple countries, he would be retiring and moving back to Sydney. 

StarHub said last night after the markets closed that a global search for his replacement would begin immediately.

Kaliaropoulos re-joined StarHub in July 2018, bringing with him sweeping changes that recalibrated TV’s cost to the Singapore business, adjusted channel licensing fees to their lowest levels ever, and, in the last reported quarter, appears to have slowed pay-TV subscriber erosion.

Although the platform’s pay-TV base hit three-year lows at the end of March 2020, the quarterly subs decrease slowed significantly to the lowest quarterly losses ever. StarHub now has 327,000 pay-TV subscribers, down from 487,000 at the end of March 2017. Arpu is down from S$51/US$36 to S$38/US$27 – a drop of just under 26%. 

The biggest loss in the last 13 quarters was in Q3 2019, when the platform dropped 27,000 subs in three months. This followed a 20,000 loss in Q2 2019.