4:40 PM -- The Tom Rutledge era at Charter Communications Inc. took a big step east Tuesday as the operator announced the move of its corporate headquarters from St. Louis to a new 70,000-square-foot building in downtown Stamford, Conn.
As a result, a "small number" of jobs are leaving St. Louis for Stamford, which eventually will become home base for about 200 Charter employees, including new CEO Tom Rutledge and several other high-level execs and their direct reports. That number is expected to include several ex-Cablevision Systems Corp. execs who recently reunited with Rutledge and also happen to live in the Stamford area. (See Ex-TWC & Cablevision Execs Join Charter , Charter Lands a Fourth Cablevision Exec, Another Ex-Cablevision Exec Lands at Charter and Ex-Cablevision COO Becomes Charter CEO.)
Time Warner Cable Inc., by the way, used to call Stamford home before shipping its headquarters to New York City.
Charter will keep close ties to St. Louis, where the operator serves more than 550,000 customers and supports one of its largest customer care centers. Most of Charter's corporate functions will supposedly remain there, and the company has pledged to add nearly 300 new jobs in the area in the coming months.
Charter, which will plow about $10 million into its new Stamford digs, will also maintain its office in Denver, which still houses some of Charter's key engineering talent.
While Rutledge doesn't get the credit for guiding Charter out of its bankruptcy mess (that goes to the team led by Neil Smit, who's now running the show at Comcast Cable), he is the one now tasked with completing the turnaround at Charter, a cable operator that historically has trailed its peers in just about every important cable statistic. (See Charter Leaves Chapter 11 and Charter Narrows Video Losses in Q2 .)
Rutledge clearly got what he wanted when he took the job and appears to have most of his dream team in place. We'll soon see if he can execute on his vision from his new post in Stamford.
— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable
