Formula 1 tire maker Pirelli has announced a sudden change of succession plans just days after the Italian government invoked special powers to limit the influence of the company’s main shareholder, Chinese state-owned conglomerate Sinochem.
Veteran CEO Marco Tronchetti Provera is due to step down next month, with a board meeting scheduled for July 31 to vote on the company’s new leadership. Last year, shareholders indicated that Tronchetti Provera’s successor should be deputy CEO Giorgio Luca Bruno.
Today (June 20), Tronchetti Provera’s holding company, Camfin, which has a 14.1% stake in Pirelli, said Bruno took himself out of the running for the top role, citing other business interests. “After working together for many years to lead Pirelli’s development, I decided to pursue my own entrepreneurial path that will take up all my professional energy in the future,” Bruno said in a statement included in Camfin’s media release (link in Italian).
Who will be Pirelli’s next CEO?
In its release, Camfin stated that the new candidate to succeed Tronchetti Provera was Andrea Casaluci, who currently holds the title of Pirelli’s general manager operations. Tronchetti Provera is instead expected to take on the role of executive vice chairman.
Camfin, Pirelli’s second-largest single shareholder after Sinochem, has the power to determine the company’s next CEO after the Italian government intervened last week to limit the Chinese shareholder’s powers. Sinochem is the parent company of China National Rubber Co. (CNRC), which owns a 37% stake in Pirelli via an entity called Marco Polo International Italy.
Giorgia Meloni’s government invoked the so-called golden power rule, which oversees Italy’s foreign direct investment. As part of the regulation, it can intervene in companies that are seen as essential to the country’s interests. The Italian government expressed reservations about China’s influence over Pirelli and its access to data the company collects about cars’ performance through its Cyber Tyre system.
The move was criticized by Chinese publication Global Times, which is controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, in a June 19 article that suggested Italy’s decision was the product of “paranoid hype.”