MILAN (Reuters) -Philippe Donnet kept his job as chief executive of Italian insurer Generali on Friday when he won the backing of shareholders in the face of a challenge from a rebel investor.
The company’s board nominees, backed by leading shareholder Mediobanca, gained the support of 56% of shareholders who voted at the company’s annual general meeting, against 42% for a rival slate nominated by investor Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone.
However, Caltagirone’s share of the vote was enough to ensure his list would be allocated three of the seats on the 13-person Generali board, potentially making life uncomfortable for Donnet, who has been in charge since 2016.
The shareholder vote on Friday, held remotely because of lingering COVID-19 concerns, ended a bitter struggle for control of Generali.
Caltagirone and fellow billionaire investor Leonardo Del Vecchio had opposed the list of executives proposed by the Generali board.
Caltagirone had come up with his own candidates for the top jobs, nominating former Generali executive Luciano Cirina as a replacement for Donnet and former Goldman Sachs banker Claudio Costamagna as chairman alongside Cirina.
Donnet had made a strong defence of his record and argued that the rebels were trying to call the shots despite owning a minority of the shares.
Cirina and Costamagna had dubbed their programme “Awakening the Lion”, a reference to Generali’s nickname “The Lion of Trieste”.
They wanted to spend as much as 7 billion euros ($7.40 billion) on M&A, compared with the existing board’s plan for 3 billion euros, and have also targeted annual earnings growth of more than 14% with heavy cost cuts and acquisitions.
($1 = 0.9462 euros)
(Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro and Valentina ZaEditing by Keith Weir and David Goodman)
