Vivarte names new Chief Operating Officer

By

Jean-Paul Leroy

Published
Mar 3, 2015

Even though the La Halle retail chain has already hired a restructuring specialist, Hélène Lee Bouygues, who comes from McKinsey, this time it is at the group level that a new executive has been taken on. Indeed, Massimiliano Messina, who has notably successfully managed several difficult situations and periods of transition," according to the press release from Vivarte, has been appointed the group's new Chief Operating Officer. He replaces Pierre Trotot, who arrived a little less than a year ago as the Deputy General Manager and who has resigned.

With a PhD in economics from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Massimiliano Messina started his career in auditing in 1996 at Deloitte & Touche in Milan. He then joined the Sara Lee group in 1999, where he successively served as internal audit manager in Paris, head of management control and then financial director of the textiles branch (Playtex, Wonderbra, Dim) in Rome.

He returned to Paris in 2004 as the head of management control of Europe, the Middle East and Africa in a division of Carrier, a subsidiary of the United Technologies group. In 2007, he joined the Delphi group as financial director of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In 2012, he left for the General Motors group in Zurich, where he was appointed financial director of Chevrolet and Cadillac Europe.

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With the official arrival of Richard Simonin at the head of the group and now its new COO, Vivarte should soon be seeing a new strategy and notably several restructuring measures.
 
According to insiders, a redundancy scheme is expected for La Halle with store closures included, but no official details are obviously yet available. The group has said that a press release can be expected in mid-March.