Many C.E.O.'s have to be dragged from the corner office kicking and screaming. The chief executive of Vodafone Group, the world's largest wireless company, is stepping down even after the pressure on him to exit disappeared more than a year ago.

Indeed, the chief executive, Arun Sarin, 53, is walking away on a high: Vodafone says it swung to a profit more than $13 billion for the year after a big loss the previous year. Sarin will be succeeded by his deputy, Vittorio Colao.

Vodafone, based in Newbury, England, owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless and has more than 260 million customers around the world.

Sarin, an Indian-born American executive, became C.E.O. in 2003. He succeeded Christopher Gent, who had spent hundreds of billions in acquisitions in building Vodafone, including the biggest deal ever, the $183 billion purchase of Mannesmann of Germany in 2000.

All that dealmaking caught up to Vodafone, and in 2006 some of its largest shareholders were calling for Sarin to resign.

Sarin survived the shareholder revolt and Vodafone has turned itself around, in large part as a result of a deal: It reached a deal last year to acquire a stake in Hutchison Essar, one of India's biggest wireless providers.

It has had strong growth in emerging markets like India and Turkey that has powered Vodafone's results of late. The company has also reached deals with Apple to offer the iPhone in a number of countries.

That will make Sarin a tough act to follow, notes Dominic White of the Telegraph.

Even amid strong results, he says, "investors have seen their gains trimmed as doubts have reemerged about the company's growth prospects and the looming specter of regulation."

As for Sarin? The Times of London says that Sarin is expected to take the path of many former C.E.O.'s and find a job in private equity.