Panini S.p.A., a global provider of advanced hardware systems supporting service and software solutions for remote image-capture and payment processing, announces today that its Board of Directors has appointed Nicola Aliperti as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. He will also serve both as a member of the Board of Directors within the parent company Panini S.p.A. and as Chairman of the Board of its subsidiary, Panini North America. This appointment represents an important milestone in the multi-year innovation and growth strategy in the payment sector implemented by the company in late 2007 and included the ILP III private equity fund to enter as shareholder in Panini.
Ugo Panini, co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Panini S.p.A., and Valeria Panini, Deputy Chairman will be fully devoted to expanding market opportunities for the company through product and business innovation and strategic marketing.
Nicola Aliperti brings to the company a wealth of experience in the IT and banking sector. During his 26-year career he held a variety of leadership roles in technical and commercial areas, within diverse industries and geographical regions. He enjoyed a very successful career in Hewlett Packard (HP), where his last position was VP Financial Services Industry for EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In this position, he has driven substantial and profitable growth across the entire product and services portfolio, providing best-in-class total customer experience to Financial Institutions. Prior to this role, Nicola has been VP and Managing Director of HP Italy and Chairman of the Board of HP Distributed Computing Services.
With the appointment of Nicola Aliperti as CEO, Panini has added an experienced, successful executive, who will build on Panini’s impressive growth over the last few years and expand its leadership on the global market. Nicola shares with the Board of Directors and the Panini family the same passion for continuous innovation and customer value delivery: “I’m very excited and enthusiastic about joining a company like Panini which has built its market position and image on Quality and Innovation and where all the employees are devoted to market leadership through continuous innovation, product and service quality and a customer-centric approach”.
The company also reports a strengthening of its market leadership position confirmed in late 2008 by independent market analysts and by strong revenue growth in 2008. Outlook for 2009 is positive, despite the critical economic scenario, and the Company plans extensive investment in R&D and business development.
