"Do you really think we are so stupid?" A letter to the CEO of Deutsche Telekom (A) Konstantin Korotov Urs Muller Ulf Schafer Introduction When Rene Obermann took over as Deutsche Telekom's CEO in November 2006, he knew that serious challenges and battles were on the horizon. As a board member he had worked with his predecessor Kai-Uwe Ricke on a change plan, which aimed to turn around years of declining performance by improving service and cutting costs. Ricke did not stay long enough to see if the plan would work. The German government, at the time a 32 percent shareholder in DT, and private equity backer Blackstone Group (which had bought stakes in the telecommunications giant in April 2006 when the stock price was around 14) grew tired of Ricke's conciliatory approach and decided that a new broom was needed to arrest the company's continuing slide