GTE-led consortium names Roosen to head CANTV; Menascenamed chief operating officer.

IRVING, Texas -- A GTE-led consortium today named Venezuelan business leader Gustavo Roosen as chairman and chief executive officer for Compania Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV), the national telecommunications company in Venezuela.

Eduardo Menasce, currently CANTV's executive vice president-finance, was named to the new post of general manager and chief operating officer, reporting to Roosen.

The appointments were announced by the CANTV board of directors, headed by Bruce Haddad, current CANTV president and president of the GTE-led VenWorld Consortium, which owns 40 percent of CANTV. In November, Haddad was named senior vice president-international for GTE Telephone Operations, and will now assume this position in Irving, Texas.

"These two individuals form a strong, new leadership team for CANTV," Haddad said. "Gustavo is a highly successful, well-known and respected Venezuelan business leader. Eduardo is a 20-year, seasoned GTE executive with extensive international experience, who understands the issues and challenges facing CANTV. Together, they will guide CANTV toward continued network and service improvements that will benefit Venezuela, our CANTV employees and the company's stockholders."

Roosen, 51, is currently chairman and executive president of Banco Latino in Caracas, Venezuela, a post he has held since March 1994. He has led several successful businesses in the public and private sectors, including serving as president from 1992-94 of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), a government-owned oil conglomerate, and holding leadership positions in the Polar Food Division and EFE Products. Roosen also served as minister of education for the Venezuelan government from 1989 to 1992. He holds a law degree from the Universidad Catolico Andres Bello in Caracas, and a master's degree from New York University.

Menasce, 49, began his GTE career in 1974 as controller for the International Lighting Products Group in Sao Paolo, Brazil. He held a variety of general management and finance positions for GTE in Sao Paolo and Paris before GTE sold its lighting business in France in 1992. In July 1994, he re-joined GTE in Venezuela as CANTV's executive vice president-finance. He holds a master's of business administration from Columbia University, and a bachelor's degree in engineering from Pontificia Catholic University in Rio.

A GTE-led consortium purchased 40 percent of CANTV from the Venezuelan government in 1991, and GTE assumed management control of the company at that time. Since the privatization, CANTV has invested more than $1.8 billion to expand and modernize telephone service in Venezuela. This modernization includes the addition of more than one million digital lines, the addition of nearly one million new customers, the installation of 30,000 modern public telephones and the construction of a national fiber optic network.

GTE Telephone Operations is the largest U.S.-based local telephone company, providing voice, date and video products and services through more than 22 million access lines in portions of the United States, Canada, South America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Based in Irving, Texas, the company had total revenues of $15.7 billion in 1994. Its parent organization, GTE Corp., is the fourth-largest publicly owned telecommunications company in the world.

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