Divorce between Telecom Italia and the CEO Flavio Cattaneo it's now official. Less than two weeks after the rumors that they gave for imminent the sensational epilogue, the CEO leaves the group that he had begun to lead a year ago, in March 2016. With a note, the national TLC group, which sees Vivendi as the reference shareholder with 23,9% of the capital, communicated the call for Monday 24 July of the Appointments and Remuneration Committee, as well as, subsequently, of the Board of Directors, "with on the agenda the examination of the proposal for the consensual settlement of relations between the Company and Dr. Flavio Cattaneo". Incoming as general manager Amos Genish, chief convergence officer of Vivendi.
After the tensions of recent days, and the acceleration of the last two weeks, Cattaneo has therefore found an economic agreement for his exit. According to reports published by Reuters, the manager will not receive in full the special award of around 40 million euros that would be due to him under the terms of the contractAccording to rumors, the mediation would have been found on the figure of 30 million.
The departure of Flavio Cattaneo is the consequence of tensions exploded with Vivendi following his "muscular" declarations towards the government and the Infratel tenders for the realization of the national plan for ultra-broadband. Telecom has entered a collision course with the executive contesting the same tenders won by Open Fiber (50% Enel and 50% Cassa Depositi) and announced its intention to compete with its own half-fiber-half copper network in the same market failure areas.
On the Vivendi-Telecom affair Consob has intervened twice since 8 July: the first time informally, asking for clarification on the position of Flavio Cattaneo who then clarified that he wanted to stay until the expiry of the mandate; the second time, a few days ago, with an inspection by the Guardia di Finanza of the Telecom offices in Rome and Milan to ascertain the influence exercised by the French shareholder Vivendi.
