Ferrari turns to a chip guy as CEO amid industry pivot

AP Photo
AP Photo

Summary

  • Italian luxury car maker’s appointment of Benedetto Vigna shows rising role of digital technology

Ferrari NV has hired a top executive from the semiconductor industry as its new CEO, as the car industry focuses on microchips and digital technologies that increasingly control everything from the brakes to entertainment systems.

Benedetto Vigna, 52, will take over at Ferrari on Sept. 1. Until then, John Elkann, the company’s chairman, will continue as interim chief executive. Mr. Vigna is currently a divisional president at French-Italian semiconductor manufacturer STMicroelectronics NV, where he has worked for more than 25 years.

In announcing the appointment, Mr. Elkann cited Mr. Vigna’s “deep understanding of the technologies driving much of the change in our industry."

The global chip shortage that has led to production delays in the auto industry is expected to continue for months to come. That has called into question the auto sector’s rebound as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic recedes in many countries.

The pandemic’s economic fallout has hit orders for Ferraris and other luxury cars. Ferrari issued a profit warning in May, saying that because of the pandemic it wouldn’t meet profit targets it had set for itself for next year. The company pushed back the target to 2023.

Mr. Vigna follows on the heels of Louis Camilleri, who ran Ferrari starting in July 2018 following the sudden death of Sergio Marchionne, who was CEO of both the fabled sports car maker and the former Fiat Chrysler group, now part of Stellantis NV.

Mr. Camilleri, a former tobacco executive who also had no car-industry experience, stepped down in December 2020 following a bout of Covid-19. He had a successful run at the helm, boosting Ferrari sales and profit until the pandemic upended the auto industry.

Many analysts had expected Ferrari to appoint an executive with experience in the luxury-goods industry as the auto maker works to expand its brand beyond cars into products such as apparel and leather accessories.

In his years running Ferrari, Mr. Marchionne successfully pitched it to investors as a luxury-goods company that should be valued in a similar way to the likes of Hermès International SA and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. That has allowed Ferrari to achieve a market capitalization of €35 billion, equivalent to about $42.6 billion, many times that of some mass-market car makers with bigger operations.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text

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