The new CEO of Telecom Italia, Flavio Cattaneo, makes his debut today at the helm of the company, participating in the first board of directors since his appointment. This is a technical meeting, in which the various dossiers on the Telecom table are reviewed: from the sale of the Inwit towers (to the subsidiary Mediaset Ei Towers or to the Cellnex-F2i partnership?) to the strategy for Brazil (remaining as the former CEO Patuano, or sell, as Bollorè seems to want?), from the search for a strategy on content to cost cutting.
On this last point in particular, the 1 billion cut requested by the French of Vivendi, who hold 25% of the Italian TLC (and who have just closed the purchase of Mediaset Premium), does not please the unions at all, who fear a number exorbitant number of redundancies, from 15 to 20 thousand according to their projections. Redundancies that Vivendi immediately denied by CEO Arnaud de Puyfointaine but the new CEO Cattaneo has nevertheless called a welcome meeting with the trade unions on 28 April, during which the question will certainly be addressed and definitively clarified. All this is connected with the sore story of ultra-broadband, on which Telecom has recently been "overtaken" by Enel: having missed this train, the unions fear difficulties for a company that has 50 employees in Italy and in the last year has lost 2 billion in revenue.
Moreover, Cattaneo is familiar with these issues, having now sat on the Board of Directors for two years. In anticipation of the meeting, in the afternoon, at the end of the morning the Telecom Italia stock suffers a Business Square, where on a sluggish (but currently positive) day for the Stock Exchange, it lost 1,3% to 0,8875 euros per share.
