Thirty million euros in severance pay for a year and a half's work are destined to become a record: this is how much Flavio Cattaneo will collect to leave the leadership of Telecom Italia after only 16 months thanks to a stratospheric contract that he agreed upon his arrival with the French of Vivendi, first shareholders of the telephone company. Cattaneo will divorce by mutual consent from Telecom Italia in Monday's board of directors after losing the trust of Vivendi, who reproaches him for a line of useless confrontation with the Government and with Open Fiber on ultra-broadband projects.
Cattaneo can legitimately boast of having temporarily improved Telecom's operating results, increasing EBITDA from 3,7 billion to over 4 billion in the first half of 2017, but in reality he has never managed to win the trust of the market, as demonstrated by the performance of the stock on the Stock Exchange, which has lost 14,83% since its arrival.
Be that as it may, the French, who continue to bet on convergence, will move on after the divorce with Cattaneo with two moves: the creation of a triumvirate, which will divide up the powers of the outgoing CEO and which will be made up of President Arnaud de Puyfontaine, by the vice-president Giuseppe Recchi and the new general manager, the Israeli Amos Gemish, and the resumption of dialogue with the Government, sanctioned by a recent meeting between the premier Paolo Gentiloni and the owner of Vivendi, Vincent Bollorè who promised not to hinder the Open Fiber programs on fiber.
The independent director appointed by Vivendi, Franco Bernabè, former number one of Telecom Italia, however, will not assume new official positions, but his advice on the future of the telephone company and on relations with the Government is destined to have ever greater weight by virtue of his skills in the field of telecommunications, which in the Telecom house remain a rare commodity and which will become even more precious when the competition with the other operators, new and old, becomes more bitter, as everything suggests that it will happen in the coming months.
