Tim’s board of directors he nominated Pietro Labriola as the new CEO of the group, a couple of months after resignation of the former to Luigi Gubitosi, who had left his position following the disappointing economic results and the controversy that arose after the offer to buy the company by the US fund KKR. Labriola, up to now head of Tim Brasile, had taken over the executive functions as general manager in these two months together with the current president Salvatore Rossi.
Labriola is 54 years old, has a degree in Economics and Commerce and a master’s degree in Innovation Management. Before joining Tim he had hired several roles within the communications company Infostrada, starting in 1996. Labriola then joined Tim five years later, holding various positions, including that of managing director of Matrix, owner of the Virgilio portal. Since 2019 he was CEO of Tim Brazil and had worked on the modernization of the infrastructure and the transition to 5G.
Labriola’s choice had been hypothesized in recent weeks by various analysts, to maintain a certain continuity within the company after the resignation of Gubitosi, who had been its CEO since 2018.
Gubitosi was frowned upon by majority shareholder Vivendi, who owns 24 percent of Tim shares. The criticisms had concerned 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).
In the autumn, the situation was further complicated by the offer by the US fund KKR to acquire at least 51 percent of the company’s shares, in order to gain control.
In recent years Gubitosi had been among 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 those of the housing. 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.
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