Santiago Argelich Hesse has served as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Telefónica Deutschland Holding AG since January 2026 and is a member of the Group Executive Committee of the international Telefónica Group.

As CEO, he is responsible for the strategic direction of Telefónica Deutschland in a dynamic market and within Europe’s largest economy. He leads one of the largest and, in recent years, fastest-growing full-service providers of telecommunications solutions for residential and business customers in Germany. An excellent network, more than 35 million mobile connections, 2.4 million landline customers, and a comprehensive range of innovative digital services in the areas of the Internet of Things, security, entertainment, and data analytics make Telefónica Deutschland a key driver of the country’s digital transformation.

Santiago Argelich Hesse has more than 20 years of international experience in the telecommunications and digital industries. For the past seven years, he has worked for the telecommunications company Cellnex, the last four and a half of which as CEO of the subsidiary in Poland. During his time at Cellnex, he played a key role in the expansion of Cellnex Telecom across Europe into more than a dozen countries, including Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Poland.

Prior to this, Argelich held key leadership positions at the telecommunications provider Veon and at the strategy consulting firm Oliver Wyman, where, as a senior partner, he
specialized in strategy development and transformation for major telecommunications operators.

Santiago Argelich Hesse studied engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain and holds a postgraduate degree in International Marketing Strategy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. The German-Spanish national was born in 1970 in Mülheim an der Ruhr.