On Friday, Tim’s board of directors accepted the resignation of Luigi Gubitosi, the company’s CEO, following the disappointing economic results and the controversies that arose after the company’s purchase offer by the US fund KKR. Gubitosi’s proxies will be divided between two people: they will go in part to the current president Salvatore Rossi, who thus assumes executive functions, and in part to Pietro Labriola, the current head of Tim Brasile, who has been appointed general manager.
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Gubitosi, who had been Tim’s CEO since late 2018, had long been frowned upon by the majority shareholder (the French group Vivendi, which owns 24 per cent of the shares) due to the worsening of the company’s accounts and some commercial choices, such as the decision to support Dazn in the purchase of the television rights of Serie A football (of which Tim is the first sponsor).
The controversy linked to the offer to purchase at least 51 percent of Tim’s shares by the American fund KKR also contributed to his decision to step down.
In recent years Gubitosi had been one of the protagonists of the operation that led to the foundation of FiberCop, a company in charge of the development and installation of the fiber or copper connections between the junction boxes (the ones you see on the street) up to the individual homes. . FiberCop is controlled 58 percent by Tim and has KKR as its second shareholder with 37.5 percent, while the remaining shares are owned by Fastweb. The company had therefore sanctioned, more than other initiatives, a significant involvement of KKR in the telecommunications sector in Italy.
For this reason, some analysts had hypothesized that KKR’s proposal to buy the majority of Tim’s shares had been favored by the contacts already underway with the fund by Gubitosi, to the detriment of the current majority shareholder, Vivendi.
Gubitosi, in his letter of resignation, had not mentioned these hypotheses but had spoken of “dilatory attitudes on the part of the [d’amministrazione, ndr], which can be interpreted as aimed at defending the interests of certain shareholders “. In the letter Gubitosi also writes that he resigned to allow “a more serene and rapid evaluation” of KKR’s offer. Tim’s board of directors accepted his resignation on Friday night.
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