Arun Sarin
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Arun Sarin (born October 21, 1954) is the Chief Executive of the British based global mobile telecommunications company Vodafone Group Plc. He is originally from India, has United States citizenship, and is presently based in the United Kingdom.
Sarin graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur with a BS in Engineering in 1975. In 1978 he gained a MS in Engineering and a MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. He started his career as a management consultant before moving, in 1984, to Pacific Telesis Group in San Francisco. He was a director of AirTouch from July 1995 and was President and Chief Operating Officer from February 1997 to June 1999. He was then Vodafone's Chief Executive Officer for the United States and Asia Pacific region until 15 April 2000, when Vodafone's U.S. interests were merged into Verizon Wireless. He subsequently became chief executive of InfoSpace from 2000 to 2001, and of Accel-KKR Telecom based in San Francisco from 2001 to 2003, while serving as a non-executive director of Vodafone. He rejoined Vodafone as Chief Executive Designate on 1 April 2003 and was appointed on a permanent basis after the Company's AGM on 30 July 2003.
Sarin was appointed at a time when the investment community wanted Vodafone to concentrate on managing its businesses efficiently and returning cash to shareholders, after its dramatic takeover driven expansion between 1999 and 2002. In 2004 he entered an auction for AT&T Wireless in the face of considerable hostility from analysts and shareholders, but withdrew when Cingular made an offer he did not think it was in Vodafone's interests to match.
Sarin has also served as a director of The Gap, Inc., The Charles Schwab Corporation and Cisco Systems, Inc. in the United States, and has recently been appointed as a non-executive director of the Court of the Bank of England.
Sarin is married to Rummi Anand Sarin.
