Knapp stepping down at NTL

BARCLAY Knapp, one of the great survivors of the technology boom, is finally stepping down from NTL, the cable television and telecoms operator he founded.

NTL, which has just gone through a painful $10.6bn (£6.6bn) debt-for-equity swap, said Knapp was standing down as president and chief executive.

He is to be replaced by Simon Duffy, a former finance director of the Orange mobile phones group and of the EMI music giant, who was brought in earlier this year as NTL's chief operating officer.

NTL, which has 2.7m customers in the UK, today reported pre-tax losses for the first half of the year of $508m against $876m last time.