THE chief executive of NTL was ejected from his job yesterday, just as the cable company is trying to pull off the back-to-back acquisitions of Telewest and Virgin Mobile.

Simon Duffy is to become executive vice-chairman of NTL next month, to make way for Stephen Burch, a US cable industry veteran who has spent the past 17 years with Comcast, the market leader.

The move is thought to have followed US investor pressure, but NTL insisted yesterday that Mr Duffy had “absolutely not” been sidelined.

In a rare interview, James Mooney, NTL’s low-profile chairman, said that Mr Duffy was fully behind the decision. “We have had discussions about this for months and he is very excited about his new role,” Mr Mooney said.

The chairman said that Mr Duffy, who will focus on group strategy and business development, would stay on his current pay. He added: “NTL is going to be almost double in size from what it was, and potentially even greater, and it is much more diverse in terms of its product lines . . . This is the logical next step.”

Mr Duffy has said in the past that he would be prepared to sacrifice his job if it posed an obstacle to a deal with Telewest.

It is understood that US investors had urged NTL to find a chief executive with detailed integration experience to oversee the merger.

NTL shares rose 33 cents to $66.5 on Nasdaq after the announcement of Mr Duffy’s move. The handover comes as Mr Duffy’s two biggest projects — a tie-up with Telewest and a potential acquisition of Virgin Mobile — enter a critical stage.

NTL earlier this month made an £817 million approach for Virgin Mobile, which was rebuffed by the Virgin board as insufficient. Meanwhile, NTL is finalising its £3.4 billion merger with Telewest and hopes to complete the deal early next year.

Although NTL insisted that Mr Duffy will remain in charge of talks with Virgin, his role will inevitably be less involved.

Mr Duffy, former chief financial officer of Orange, the mobile phone company, joined NTL as chief operating office in 2003 when the cable group emerged from bankruptcy protection. He was made chief executive four months later, taking over from Barclay Knapp.

Before the Telewest talks, Mr Duffy smoothed the way for a merger by selling NTL’s mast business and its Irish division and by streamlining and making more efficient the organisation’s billing and call centres.

The appeal of Mr Burch, who runs Comcast’s Atlantic unit, lies in his role in the combining of Comcast and AT&T Broadband, integrating two million subscribers within 18 months.

Areyh Bourkoff, an analyst with UBS, said: “The bolstered management team bodes well for the success of the combined company.”

NTL also confirmed that it is restructuring its acquisition of Telewest so that Telewest will now buy NTL. This will help the combined group to keep a Telewest contract with the BBC, a joint-venture partner in UKTV channels.

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