Italian PM forces leadership change at Poste Italiane
New Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi has forced leadership changes in a number of major public sector organisations, including Poste Italiane. The state-owned postal service will have former MEP Maria Luisa Todini as president and telecoms industry stalwart Francisco Caio as its new chief executive.
Other members of the board at Poste Italiane for 2014 to 2017 will include Roberto Rao, Antonio Campo Dall’Orto and Elisabetta Fabbri.
Caio
Francesco Caio
The new Poste Italiane CEO is known as a telecoms expert and entrepreneur, a key figure in the mobile phone industry following its liberalisation in the 1990s.
His last role was as the Italian government’s digital tzar, tasked by the last prime minister Enrico Letta with accelerating the digital agenda in Italy. Caio’s name was being circulated as a possible successor to Poste Italiane chairman and CEO Massimo Sarmi in autumn last year.
Caio, 57, has strong corporate and international credentials, he is a former London-based McKinsey consultant who started out his career as an Olivetti salesman brought back to run that company’s telecoms operations in 1992, before founding mobile operator Omnitel. He went on to run consumer appliance manufacturer Merloni, set up communications firm Netscalibur and then ran UK telecoms firm Cable & Wireless.
He is a former director of mobile firm Motorola, appliance manufacturer Indesit and a former European chief of the controversial bank Lehman Brothers.
As the new chief executive of Poste Italiane, Caio is expected to drive the company towards privatisation, with the government intending to float around 40% of the company on the stock market in the hopes of raising around EUR 4bn to 5bn.
Todini
Poste Italiane’s new president, Maria Luisa Todini, is part of a conscious effort by the new prime minister to appoint more women to senior public sector roles.
Todini, 47, is also a well known entrepreneur in Italy as president of construction firm Todini Costruzioni Generali and green energy firm Ecos Energia, and a director of construction firm Salini Costruttori. She is also chairman of investment firm Todini Finanziaria and property firm Domus Etruria, and a board member of broadcaster RAI.
A law graduate who was elected as an MEP with Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party in 1994, Todini speaks English, French and Spanish fluently.
Caio and Todini succeed chairman and CEO Massimo Sarmi, a former World Mail Award leadership winner whose time at Poste Italiane saw the company as one of the world’s most profitable posts that ended 2013 making EUR 1bn profit despite the huge challenges the company faced with declining mail revenues.
In a statement announcing the new directors at Poste Italiane, the Italian government expressed its thanks for Massimo Sarmi’s work as chairman and CEO at the postal operator.
The Italian Prime Minister, who has been in power since predecessor Enrico Letta’s resignation in February, said the new directors were part of a “credible and firm change” at the top of Poste Italiane and the other state-controlled companies, power firm Enel, petroleum firm Eni and aerospace firm Finmeccanica.
