Mobile phone operator Zain Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday its top executive will step down less than a year after it started operations, to be replaced by the head of its Kuwaiti parent company.

Marwan Al-Ahmadi will step down as chief executive by the end of March to remain board member of Zain Saudi Arabia, which last year became the third firm to operate a mobile network in the Arab world's largest economy.

Saad Al-Barrak, chief executive of Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications Co (Zain), will take over, said Zain Saudi Arabia, which is 25 percent-owned by Zain.

The change was in line with "previously agreed upon arrangements", it said in a statement.

The arrangements were for Al-Ahmadi to lead the inception and start-up operations of the firm after winning in 2007 a $6.1 billion licence to operate the mobile network, it said.

Al-Ahmadi was also supposed, under the same arrangement, to "implement marketing and organisational strategies for the start-up phase in order to ensure the success of the launch," it said.

"The change ... comes as a result of this arrangement after completing all the requirement of the phase with great success," it said, noting it has exceeded initial targets by 27 percent.

Zain reached 2 million customers, or a 7 percent share, in the four months that followed the start of operations in August, Al-Ahmadi said last month.

The company made a net loss of 2.3 billion riyals ($607.5 million) in 2008 on revenues of 500 million riyals.

Al-Ahmadi said last month that Zain Saudi Arabia would post its first positive EBITDA in 2010. Zain raised 6.3 billion riyals in an initial public offering last year.

Zain Saudi Arabia competes with state-controlled Saudi Telecom and Mobily, in which Emirates Telecommunications is the largest shareholder. - Reuters