Why was Mario Rossetti torpedoed by Open Fiber?

28 September 20238 months ago babelfish

Open Fiber will no longer be led by Mario Rossetti. Facts, numbers and insights

Changes at the top of Open Fiber, the fiber optic company. The CDP shareholders and the Macquarie fund – upon input and approval from the government and the Ministry of Economy – have given the green light to the early replacement of Mario Rossetti at the head of the company with Giuseppe Gola, former CEO of Acea and former CFO of Wind .

For some time, there had been rumors in the Roman palaces of Rossetti's exit from Open Fiber before the end of his mandate. With a more financial than industrial background, Rossetti leaves the role of company head to an expert in the telecommunications sector like Gola, wanted by the government and shareholders.

The change was also favored by Rossetti's willingness to resign before the end of his mandate.

Here are facts, comments and insights into Rossetti's management.

OPEN FIBER NUMBERS ACCORDING TO OPEN FIBER

The plan to cover the white areas with Open Fiber fiber is progressing and "from an economic point of view, perhaps for the first time the issue is not the lack of financial resources". Andrea Falessi, head of external and institutional relations of Open Fiber, underlined this this week during the round table at the States General of Fiber: "Today there are impressive public plans, in the Pnrr several plans for almost 7 billion in the different chapters – recalled Falessi – some problems are being resolved such as the higher costs due to inflation, those in the logistics chains created when the conflict broke out in Ukraine but the real problem for the entire infrastructure market is the lack of personnel: 10 are missing thousand people and for OF there are around 4 thousand resources that we need and that we are including in our plans".

THE JUDGMENT OF THE CORRIERE DELLA SERA

The opinion of Corriere della sera is also essentially in line with the company's positions; “Rossetti leaves the helm of Open Fiber after just under two years, which started off slowly due to the delays accumulated by the previous management on the broadband plan. Delays which have been partly recovered through a new industrial plan, but without the possibility of bringing Open Fiber back on track with the initial objectives which envisaged the completion of the network in the white areas in 2021. To date the company has built over 70 thousand kilometers of fiber, 76% of what was foreseen in the plan, and closed the first half of the year with revenues of 267.5 million, up 28% and an Ebitda of 102.7 million with an increase of 33%", he said . the RCS newspaper wrote yesterday.

KEY4BIZ'S CRITICISM OF BARBERIO, BUTTI'S COUNCILOR

The TLC specialist newspaper Key4biz , founded and directed by Raffaele Barberio, advisor to the undersecretary to the Prime Minister, Alessio Butti (Fratelli d'Italia), has a completely different opinion: "Mario Rossetti got everything he could get wrong – he wrote in recent days Barberio – He did not worry about the company's operations, efficiency and revenues, an indisputable task of a CEO, but instead embarked on a crazy undertaking for the acquisition of the TIM network driven by his own huge ego and the completely wrong advice of the half-socks who within the company declare themselves strategists of tactics and strategy, as well as of regulatory and institutional relations. In this case, the internal troubleshooter of Manzoni's memory had reassured him of the non-existence of antitrust problems in the operation, thus also derailing CDP's project for the single network".

After the criticism of Rossetti, a welcome to Gola from the advisor to the undersecretary at Palazzo Chigi with responsibility for innovation: "We can't do anything else – wrote Barberio – other than wish good luck to the new CEO Giuseppe Gola, because he, yes, inherits a destroyed company. It would certainly be a good idea to initiate a series of audits aimed at verifying the correctness of company data and the consequences of failure to comply with the rules set out in the Conventions and Concessions that have occurred under the current management. We would like to conclude by stating that Open Fiber now has only one way out, which we were the first to indicate way back in January this year ( What if we separated the Open Fiber network instead? ), recently also taken up by the Hon. Maurizio Gasparri and which consists in the separation between black areas on the one hand (to be sold on the market) and white areas and gray areas on the other, to bring the latter together in the current industrial project of the MEF and KKR. The only objective achieved by Mario Rossetti is to be able to say that he leaves Open Fiber much worse than he found it, an inevitable result if one considers the management methods practiced".

Barberio's final attack on Rossetti: "In these hours we imagine the lawyers' blades are being sharpened, to presumably negotiate a millionaire settlement in favor of the ousted CEO and, we are certain, perhaps accompanied by protective umbrellas with indemnities that protect from any subsequent action of responsibility".

THE CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR VATALARO

But there was not only journalistic-political criticism of Rossetti's work at the head of Open Fiber. Especially significant are the analyzes of a technician of the caliber of Professor Salvatore Vatalaro, ordinary dean of Telecommunications, University of Rome Tor Vergata, in several interventions in Start Magazine where he highlighted the critical issues also of the unclear relationships of Open Fiber with Infratel (Invitalia group) : “In summary, Open Fiber won all the public tenders for the White Areas of the country by formulating irresponsibly downward offers, even greatly increasing, compared to the tender basis, the number of fiber optic connections offered up to the customer's premises (FTTH ). He did this by hypothesizing completely unreasonable potential revenues which naturally did not even remotely materialize. – he wrote in an open letter to the government and in particular to the Ministry of Economy – He did not respect the conditions set out in the agreement signed with the concessionaire Infratel Italia which, in 2020, when the projects had to be delivered and they were in very high seas and stormy, having very belatedly acknowledged the complete failure of the company, instead of requesting the payment of the conspicuous and necessary penalties foreseen , has instead reduced by around a thousand the fiber optic municipalities to be built also by transferring a large number of other municipalities from FTTH technology to the cheaper and less performing FWA radio technology. Despite this, there is no end in sight to the implementation of the program."

Vogon Today

Why was Mario Rossetti torpedoed by Open Fiber?

Open Fiber will no longer be led by Mario Rossetti. Facts, numbers and insights

OPEN FIBER NUMBERS ACCORDING TO OPEN FIBER

THE JUDGMENT OF THE CORRIERE DELLA SERA

KEY4BIZ'S CRITICISM OF BARBERIO, BUTTI'S COUNCILOR

THE CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR VATALARO

ALL THE LATEST INSIGHTS FROM START MAGAZINE ON OPEN FIBER:

Open Fiber tossed between Gasparri and Renzi

Open Fiber delayed? Here are the (unspoken) causes

Open Fiber must be placed under special administration. Word of the prof. Vatalaro

Open Fiber: the CDP letter, the Infratel case and the (critical) silences of the government

Will Intesa Sanpaolo, Unicredit and Banco Bpm still help Open Fiber?