Vodafone Group Plc has chosen Margherita Della Valle, a 29-year company veteran, as its next CEO, defying speculation that the telecommunications giant would choose someone from outside the company for the first time.
Della Valle's career began at Omnitel, an Italian telecoms startup, where she was one of the first thirty employees and helped decide the location of the company's radio masts for its new mobile network. Omnitel was later acquired by Vodafone and became Vodafone Italy in 2001.
Over the years, Della Valle has become a Vodafone stalwart, holding several roles such as Europe CFO, Group Financial Controller, Deputy CFO, and CFO. She has implemented cost-saving measures worth billions of euros and overseen the carve-out, listing, and sale of the company's mobile mast business, Vantage Towers AG.
Since taking the reins from Nick Read in January, Della Valle has cut hundreds of jobs at Vodafone's London headquarters, appointed a chief commercial officer, and delegated commercial decision-making to local units. While Vodafone searches for an external successor, Della Valle remains the company's CFO and has appointed Vodacom director Anna Dimitrova as group financial controller.
Della Valle's appointment makes her the first woman to lead Vodafone, which had a 60% male workforce as of last year. She is also one of only a few female CEOs in the FTSE 100 Index of Britain's largest companies. Born in Rome, Della Valle speaks French, Italian, and English and received her Master's degree in economics from Bocconi University, an elite private university in Milan.
Della Valle recently joined Bocconi University's board, reuniting her professionally with Italy's former digital minister Vittorio Colao, who also ran Vodafone from 2008 to 2018. A self-confessed "fan" of Della Valle, he and the new CEO worked at Vodafone with Paolo Bertoluzzo, now CEO of payment processor Nexi Spa.
Della Valle's leadership and resilience may be inspired by her love for reading about the polar exploration of legendary explorer Ernest Shackleton, who rescued his trapped team during a near-disastrous voyage in Antarctica. While her circumstances are less arduous, with a raft of complex deals and potential shareholder activism to contend with in the coming months, Shackleton's leadership may prove helpful.
According to New Street Research analyst James Ratzer, the announcement of a permanent CEO should help free up Vodafone to push ahead with several strategic initiatives that seem to be in limbo. However, he believes that many people could see this as a missed opportunity to drive change, as Vodafone's business has recently begun to underperform its peers across the board.