Saipem chairman takes on chief executive role

Italian oilfield services provider Saipem has appointed the current chairman of the company as its new chief executive officer (CEO).

Saipem confirmed the naming of the current chairman of the board of directors – Francesco Caio – as its new CEO during a shareholders’ meeting on 30 April. He takes over from Stefano Cao who served as CEO of Saipem since 2015.

Caio has considerable experience in Italy and abroad as a CEO of multinational companies, both public and private, operating in the industrial sector, in advanced technology, finance, and telecommunications such as Olivetti, Omnitel, Merloni Eldo, Netscalibur, Lehman Brothers, and Avio.

He has been on the board of directors for multinationals in the U.S., England, France, and Italy for such companies as Equant, Motorola, Università Bocconi, Gruppo Sole 24 Ore, Invensys, Alcatel Lucent, Confindustria, Politecnico di Milano and BNL.

Caio was also a director for the government initiative on digital technologies and broadband. From 2014 to 2017, he was the CEO and managing director of Poste Italiane.

During that time, he led the initial public offering on the stock exchange in 2015. The IPO of Poste Italiane was the largest in Europe in 2015 and the largest in Italy in the last ten years.

In 2018, he was appointed the chairman of Saipem and in 2020 he was also appointed the chairman of the board of Italy Air Transport.

Apart from approving the new CEO, the shareholders also appointed the new board of directors which will serve during 2021, 2022, and 2023.

The new board comprises of Silvia Merlo who is also the chairwoman, Francesco Caio as CEO, Roberto Diacetti, Alessandra Ferone, Patrizia Michela Giangualano, Pier Francesco Ragni, Marco Reggiani, Paul Simon Schapira, and Paola Tagliavini.

Saipem stated that Merlo, Caio, Ferone, Ragni, Reggiani, and Tagliavini were drawn from the list put forward jointly by Italian oil major Eni and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti – whose combined holding amounts to 43.095 per cent.

Diacetti, Giangualano, and Schapira were drawn from the list put forward by shareholders, representing 1.161 per cent of Saipem’s ordinary share capital.

It is worth noting that the appointment of Caio as CEO comes at a time when over 500 public seats are set to be renewed in Italian companies.

Some 90 of those seats are controlled by the Ministry of Economy and they include heavyweights such as Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, Fs, Invitalia, Autostrada, and Società Anonima Italiana Perforazioni E Montaggi or more concisely – Saipem.

In recent company news, it is worth mentioning that Saipem was able to win a contract from Qatargas worth over $1 billion.

It is related to the North Field Production Sustainability Pipelines Project located offshore and onshore the North-East coast of Qatar peninsula.