Vodafone, Della Valle at the top: Read leaves

Breakthrough at Vodafone. Chief executive Nick Read has announced that he will step down from the lead of the telecommunications giant by the end of the year. Instead of him, on an interim basis, the CFO Margherita Della Valle. In his four years at the top, made more complex by the pandemic, Read sold assets to concentrate firepower on Europe and Africa, and separated the infrastructure of the towers. Yet it wasn’t enough to boost the group’s stock, and the group cut its growth estimates last month. “I agreed with the board that now is the right time to pass the baton to a new leader who can build on Vodafone’s strengths and seize future opportunities,” he said. Graduated from Bocconi in 1988, raised in Omnitel, until 2018 Della Valle was Deputy Chief Financial Officer at Group level and CFO for Vodafone Italia from 2004 to 2007.