Italy’s government nominated Giuseppina Di Foggia to be the next chief executive officer of power grid operator Terna SpA, as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni followed through on a pledge to appoint a woman to run at least one of the country’s listed, state-controlled firms.
(Bloomberg) — Italy’s government nominated Giuseppina Di Foggia to be the next chief executive officer of power grid operator Terna SpA, as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni followed through on a pledge to appoint a woman to run at least one of the country’s listed, state-controlled firms.
The 53-year-old Di Foggia, who’s currently CEO and vice president of Nokia Oyj’s Italian unit, will replace Stefano Donnarumma at Terna. She’ll be tasked with managing a plan for the company that calls for more than €21 billion ($23 billion) in investments through 2033. Rome controls Terna, which was listed in 2004, with a stake of around 30% held by its state lender.
Firms led by women CEOs accounted for only 2.4% of the total market value of Italian listed companies as of the end of 2021, market watchdog Consob said last year. The country also has the lowest female employment rate in the European Union, after being overtaken by Greece in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Meloni, the first woman to lead an Italian government, has said that naming the first female chief executive at a listed, state-controlled company was one of her administration’s main challenges.
The government this week made a series of nominations for the firms, which could give it greater sway over key portions of Italy’s economy. All the nominees will have to be confirmed by shareholders at annual general meetings in the coming weeks.
While the Di Foggia nomination was “an excellent choice,” according to Veronica De Romanis, a professor of European economics at Stanford University in Florence and Luiss University in Rome, the premier otherwise played it safe in naming new management teams. For the most part, “she went for the usual suspects instead of young people and women.”
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