TDE.L Regulatory News (TDE)

19 Dec 2007 14:09

Telefonica SA19 December 2007 PRESS RELEASE 19/12/2007 Javier de Paz and Manuel Pizarro, new members of Telefonica's board JULIO LINARES APPOINTED COO OF TELEFONICA • Guillermo Ansaldo will head Telefonica Espana Madrid, 19 December 2007.- At its ordinary meeting today, Telefonica's board,with the approval of the Nominating, Compensation and Corporate GovernanceCommittee, has named Julio Linares, General Manager for Coordination, BusinessDevelopment and Synergies, as the company's new Chief Operating Officer. It alsodecided to appoint Guillermo Ansaldo as General Manager of Telefonica Espana. MrAnsaldo will replace Antonio Viana-Baptista, who leaves the Company citingpersonal reasons. Meanwhile, Manuel Pizarro and Javier de Paz will replace Enrique Used andMaximino Carpio as members of Telefonica's board of directors. Both ManuelPizarro, Javier de Paz and Alfonso Ferrari will join as well the ExecutiveCommission of the Company's board of directors. The appointment of a new COO at Telefonica implies changes to the organisationalstructure, which in any event still supports a regional focus aimed at becomingmore customer-oriented and leveraging economies of scale. From now, the three regional business divisions, Spain, Europe and LatinAmerica, will report to the new COO, Julio Linares. Until now they had reporteddirectly to the Company's Executive Chairman and CEO, Cesar Alierta. GuillermoAnsaldo will take Antonio Viana-Baptista's place at the helm of TelefonicaEspana, with Belen Amatriain as the Company's CEO and number two. Matthew Keywill oversee Europe and Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete will continue to leadTelefonica Latinoamerica. All three general divisions will continue to manageall the fixed and mobile businesses in their respective regions in an integratedway. Also reporting to Telefonica's new COO will be four support units: Operations(Alfonso Alonso); Strategy, Innovation and Business Development (Sohail Qadri);Planning, Budgeting and Monitoring (Laura Abasolo); and Human Resources(Oscar Maraver). Therefore, reporting directly to Telefonica's Executive Chairman and CEO will beCOO Julio Linares; the General Manager of Finance and Corporate Development,Santiago Fernandez Valbuena; head of the Legal and Board Secretariat (RamiroSanchez de Lerin) and the head of the Technical Secretariat to the Chairman'sOffice (Luis Abril). In the new chain of responsibilities, Internal Auditingwill report to the Finance and Corporate Development unit, which will also actas Controller (Ezequiel Nieto). Antonio Viana-Baptista, until now the General Manager of Telefonica Espana, isleaving the company on his own accord, citing personal reasons. MrViana-Baptista, a longstanding executive at Telefonica, has spent the last nineyears -eight of them also as member of the Board of Director- achieving hugesuccess in Latin America, overseeing the global mobile division and, lastly, atTelefonica Espana. The company wishes to thank Antonio Viana-Baptista for hisdedication and achievements over these years. The Telefonica board also agreed to add Manuel Pizarro and Javier de Paz asmembers. They will replace Enrique Used and Maximino Carpio, who will leave aswell the committees they were part of. The Board recognized the intense workcarried out by the outgoing directors and thanked them for the contribution andefforts in recent years. Lastly, Antonio Hornedo Muguiro will step down, for personal reasons, as deputygeneral secretary and secretary of the board of directors. He will be replacedby Ma Luz Medrano Aranguren. Julio Linares, COO of Telefonica Julio Linares is a telecommunications engineer who joined Telefonica's R&DCentre in May 1970 and held various positions there before being appointed Headof Telefonica's Technology department in 1984. In April 1990 he was appointed General Manager of Telefonica Investigacion yDesarrollo (Telefonica I + D). In December 1994 he became Deputy General Managerof Telefonica's Marketing and Services Development department, in the commercialarea, subsequently moving to the position of Deputy General Manager forCorporate Marketing. In July 1997 he was appointed CEO of Telefonica Multimedia,and President of Telefonica Cable and Producciones Multitematicas. In May 1998 he was appointed General Manager of Strategy and Technology inTelefonica, S.A.'s Corporate Centre. He has been Executive Chairman ofTelefonica de Espana since January 2000, as well as a member of the board ofTelefonica Data Corp. In June 2005 he was appointed Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Telefonica O2Czeck Republic, and is currently the Vice-Chairman. In December 2005 he becameManaging Director for Coordination, Business Development and Synergies inTelefonica S.A., where he is also a Member of the Board of Directors andSecretary for the Executive Committee. He is also a member of the Board ofDirectors in Telefonica Espana, Telefonica O2 Europe, Telefonica Latinoamerica,Sogecable S.A., the Social Council of the Complutense University of Madrid, ofthe Advisory Scientific Council of Telefonica I+D and Counsellor representinginnovating companies in the Science and Technology Advisory Board. Guillermo Ansaldo, general manager of Telefonica Espana Guillermo Ansaldo, 45 years old, was born in Argentina. He has a degree inIndustrial Engineering from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a Master inBusiness Administration from The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration,Dartmouth College. From 1989 to 2000 he worked for McKinsey & Company. From 1989 to 1993 he wasbased in Madrid-Spain. In 1993 he returned to Argentina, and two years later hewas elected partner. During his career at McKinsey, he focused on financialinstitutions and the telecom sector. From 2000 to 2004, he held the position of Chief Executive Officer at Telefonicade Argentina S.A. In April 2005 he was appointed COO of Telefonica de Espana, subsidiary of thefixed telephony business of Telefonica Espana, position from where he hascontributed to the development of Broadband and Imagenio in Spain. The chart with the new Telefonica's organisational structure is available on theCompany's website (www.telefonica.es). For further information Press Office Ronda de Comunicacion s/n 28050- MADRID Tel: + 34 91 4823622 Tel: + 34 91 482 3637 e-mail: prensa@telefonica.es http://www.telefonica.es/saladeprensa This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange