Vodafone Group Plc has appointed Italian Margherita Della Valle as its chief executive officer, ending five months of uncertainty since the challenged British telecommunications giant ousted Nick Read in December.
(Bloomberg) — Vodafone Group Plc has appointed Italian Margherita Della Valle as its chief executive officer, ending five months of uncertainty since the challenged British telecommunications giant ousted Nick Read in December.
Della Valle, Vodafone’s chief financial officer since 2018, has been leading the company on an interim basis since Jan. 1. She’ll continue in her role as CFO until an external search for a replacement is complete, the Newbury, England-based outfit said in a statement on Thursday.
To find the company’s next leader, Chairman Jean-Francois van Boxmeer said he’d undertaken “a rigorous internal and external search” but that Della Valle had won the board over with “her pace and decisiveness to begin the necessary transformation of Vodafone.”
Della Valle takes over during a moment of turmoil for the telecommunications sector. Although data use has skyrocketed and companies have invested in new fiber and 5G networks in recent years, fees have not risen in tandem.
Days after becoming interim chief on January 1, Della re-shuffled the company’s executive committee, appointing a Chief Commercial Officer and demoting Vodafone Spain to its second tier of smaller ‘Europe Cluster’ markets. The company has also pushed through job cuts at its London corporate headquarters.
As CFO, Della Valle oversaw the implementation of cost-saving measures worth billions of euros as well as the carve-out, listing and sale of Vodafone’s mobile mast business Vantage Towers AG.
That said, she has many challenges ahead. Vodafone’s shares are close to two-decade lows and the telecom group faces stagnant or shrinking sales in key markets including its biggest, Germany, which it entered four years ago. Read, the previous CEO, proposed consolidation deals as one way for the company to improve its finances, though so far Vodafone has not finalized a UK merger with CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd’s Three UK, and last year it rejected an offer in Italy for being too low.
A weak share price and rivals and activists taking stakes in the company had fueled speculation that Vodafone might tap an external leader, but in appointing Della Valle it continues an unbroken tradition of appointing candidates with internal experience to the top job. Read had also been CFO.
Vodafone shares rose 0.9% to 95.15 pence in London on Thursday.
Della Valle is expected to lay out more of her strategy at the company’s full-year results events on May 16. She is now one of a handful of female executives in the FTSE 100 Index of Britain’s largest companies.
“I am pleased by the choice of Margherita — one of the brightest, most determined and most expert people in the sector internationally,” former Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said by phone. Colao, who has known Della Valle for 30 years, worked with her at Vodafone Italy when it was a startup called Omnitel.
“She engages with a very calm style, very controlled, but with clear objectives. I think she’s going to tackle the big issues that Vodafone has immediately. You’re speaking to a complete fan and a complete supporter. I might be slightly biased,” he said.
(Updates with context)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.