“Ours is an English model, which is often confused but must instead be distinguished from the American one”. As the CEO of Vodafone Group Vittorio Colao, guest of honor at the Bocconi University in Milan for the inauguration of the new academic year, explained to the audience of professors and lecturers what is one – if not the main – strength of the British telecommunications group.
“The Vodafone model – explained the company's global number one – is with widespread capital, where there are no control groups or significant shareholders, governance is English, actions are counted and not weighed. All shareholders are equal and nobody, this is important, sits on the board". Colao then specified that it is a "model that better protects all shareholders regardless of the investment and the time horizons".
For the 52-year-old Italian manager, who is also a Bocconi graduate, the “key issue is who decides on long-term choices”: usually the board of directors decides, "but in our board of directors sit not the shareholders but independent directors, who must represent the interests of the shareholders as a whole and the management". In Vodafone “strategies and time horizons are not defined with the shareholders in the board of directors, but by the senior executives with the board in dedicated meetings, with transparent information on the markets. It is the great challenge of public capitalism”, concluded Colao.
