ROME\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Italian government on Saturday named a veteran Italian banker, Alessandro Profumo, to run state-controlled defense group Leonardo, replacing CEO Mauro Moretti, who had finished his three year mandate.
But he was criticized for lacking experience of global markets and not winning enough orders. He denied the charge, claiming he had stopped taking on insufficiently profitable work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moretti\u2019s determination to see his mandate renewed was weakened by a recent conviction over a 2009 rail crash when he was head of Italy\u2019s railway network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
“Moretti did an excellent job increasing efficiencies but a manager with international experience is now needed to build global business,” said the spokesman at the Italian finance ministry, which holds the controlling share in Leonardo.\u00a0“It\u2019s true Profumo\u2019s experience is mainly financial but he did lead Unicredit to becoming one of the few really international banks in Europe.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The appointment however drew criticism from one Italian analyst, who pointed out that Profumo\u2019s global business experience was not matched any experience in the defense sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“After three years of Moretti, who had no experience, putting Profumo in is inexplicable,” said the analyst, who declined to be named.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The Ministry of Defense was not consulted on this appointment. There is concern in the sector and doubts that Profumo can revive Leonardo\u2019s international order book,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The appointment of veteran Italian banker, Alessandro Profumo with no defense experience, provoked rumors in Italy on Saturday that the government had handpicked Profumo to handle the sell off of the firm, but a government spokesman told Defense News the reports were \u201ctotally false.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":58970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":37,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[37,46,11],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3345],"class_list":["post-60670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-europe","category-global"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"7TJA6DN2N5BB5JEJXIZP7SSVT4","arc_canonical_url":"\/breaking-news\/2017\/03\/18\/leonardo-ceo-moretti-out-replaced-by-italian-banking-exec\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n