post office it is a drifting ship. It accumulates hundreds of millions of losses in recent years and does not stop making changes at the top. The latest, communicated internally at the beginning of this month of March, have been the dismissal of two directors who had only been in office for two yearsbut they are the tip of the iceberg: since the end of 2019, in just over three years, the public company has made 19 changes in the management teamthrough which 20 executives have passed, of which 12 have been struck down.
The close personal relationship of Juan Manuel Serranopresident of Correos since 2018, with Pedro Sanchez. That has made him untouchable, say internal sources, and he does and undoes it at will. Only three of the executives who were with him on the management team at the end of 2019 are holding out: the general secretary, Julio González García, the director of audit and control, Javier Monzó, and the director of communication and marketing, Eva Pavo, who also She is the only woman among the 8 members of the management team.
The last victims have been two key positions: the director of operations and the financial directoris especially sensitive just when the public company is finishing polishing its accounts for publication in the coming weeks and they are expected to show losses of 154 million euros. Goodbye Brown He had assumed the position in February 2021, so he has spent two years in financial management, the same time that edward herrera in the direction of operations, also ousted a few days ago.
The new financial director is Santiago Ferrer Puga, who comes from Dia supermarkets, where he has been Director of Transformation for the last 14 months, although he already had experience in the shipping sector, having spent 7 years at FedEx. The Director of Operations is now Antonio Rueda, who has also been appointed president of Correos Express -which has also just changed its general manager-, and his career is marked by more than 20 years at Airbus. Both have signed with an annual salary of around 200,000 euros gross per year, according to sources close to the company.
These changes come after five quiet months in the leadership of the Post Office. It seems little, but the letter and parcel company has experienced even more turbulent times. In October of last year he was dismissed Jose Luis Perez Pastor after almost two and a half years as deputy secretary, a position that he opened and that he has buried, since he is no longer in the management organization chart. Pérez Pastor was a lawyer for the Junta de Andalucía and defended the 24 defendants from the Andalusian Employment Service, including three former employment counselors, for subsidies for training courses. They were exonerated.
A few days earlier, in September 2022, there were two incorporations into the Correos management committee: Enrique Jesus Cervera y Fernando Ramirez they joined the strategy and labor relations departments respectively. Both were vacant. The first since June 2022 but the second for almost a year. Ramírez came from Navantia although he also went through Airbus. Cervera, a journalist, was managing director of EFE between 2020 and July 2022 and in his resume it stands out that he was a spokesman for the Junta de Andalucía with Manuel Chaves, so like Pérez Pastor, he came from the Andalusian PSOE.
Both Cervera and Ramírez are still on the Post Office board, they have been six months, and Ferrer and Rueda just two weeks. Besides these and the three untouchables of Serrano, the missing executive is Sergio Peinado, director of digital transformation and technology, a position he has held for 20 months. But he is a man of the house, since he has been in the public company for 18 years and has survived governments of all colors.
A dozen executives have remained on this path in the last little more than three years. In addition to the three mentioned, it stands out Avelino Castroone of the most fleeting since it did not last two years, and that the former director of Renfe held two positions: operations management and then strategy, which he made his debut.
It is also striking that while executives from public companies or who had held positions in socialist administrations have entered, executives from private companies have left. It is the case of Enrique Ramirez Palacinwho was director of organization, technology and innovation, who had been responsible for international development at Carrefour but who left the Spanish public company in June 2021 after 13 years with positions of responsibility. Robert Ducayformer director of ISN and Oesia and former director of Banca Cívica, did not serve two years in the leadership of Correos and left in July 2020.
Three years of losses and some millionaire fiasco
Correos has fallen into a more than delicate economic situation since the arrival of Juan Manuel Serrano. According to government budgets, last year it would have lost 154 million, although the public company has not yet made public the results of 2022. In 2021 the red numbers were 96 million, while in 2020, a year marked by the pandemic, the hole was no more and no less than 264 million. In 2019 he had earned 13 million after four years in losses.
But not only for the losses and the constant exits and entrances in the dome, Serrano’s presidency is characterized. Correos wanted to take a step forward in the air parcel transport segment and bought a plane to carry it out, but it made one of those mistakes that make reality stranger than fiction: the ship was for passengers and space for cargo was limited. .
Correos had to take charge of all the operating expenses, including the rehabilitation of the plane, so the project brought more losses than benefits. In the end, he liquidated the contract signed with Iberojet, the company with which he allied himself to manage this service, and put an end to his air adventure.
