Italy Top Female CEO Targets Growth of De Benedetti Empire
- Only 7 percent of Italy’s listed companies have women as CEOs
- Mondardini will consider international media parterships
Monica Mondardini, chief executive officer of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, poses for a photograph in her office in Rome
Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/BloombergWhen two of Italy’s biggest newspapers discussed a partnership this year, it prompted a rare gathering of the business leaders for the country’s most prominent families -- the Agnellis and De Benedettis. What was rarer still was that the key negotiator for one of the sides was a woman.
Monica Mondardini, the 55-year-old chief executive officer of the De Benedettis’ $1 billion holding company CIR SpA, brushes aside any suggestion her gender makes her an oddity even though only 7 percent of listed companies in Italy have a woman CEO, and of them, she runs the one with the biggest market value. At the January lunch in Turin to negotiate the creation of a leading player in Italy’s media industry, where she shared a table with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV CEO Sergio Marchionne and family leaders John Elkann and Rodolfo De Benedetti, she sought to get the best possible deal.