President and Chief Executive Officer, ST-Ericsson Executive Vice President, Corporate Projects, STMicroelectronics Carlo Ferro is Executive Vice President of STMicroelectronics, in charge of Corporate Projects.  He has been the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of ST-Ericsson since February 2012 and was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of ST-Ericsson on April 1, 2013.

He has been a Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of STMicroelectronics since May 2003 and over time his responsibilities have been extended to include investor relations, treasury, corporate communication, operation planning, procurement and logistics. He has also been a member of ST’s Corporate Strategic Committee. Ferro joined ST in 1999 as Group Vice President Corporate Finance. In 2002, he became Deputy CFO, and was promoted to Chief Financial Officer in 2003.

With ST-Ericsson, Ferro led the execution of a transformation and restructuring plan that allowed the Company to substantially lower its break-even point and reduce its losses by 55% in three quarters while accelerating new-product development by improving R&D efficiency. After Ferro joined the Company, ST-Ericsson showed improved discipline in execution, delivering on or above target on almost all metrics in all quarters. During his tenure as COO, employee motivation and confidence in the management team improved thru the period, as measured by a substantially increased score in the employee engagement survey.

As ST’s CFO, Ferro has contributed to executing a strategy of growth combined with financial discipline: from 2005 through the end of 2011, ST grew its revenues by about 6% CAGR (ex. divestitures) and improved its net cash balance by $1.4 billion. In addition, through the market turmoil of 2008-2011, ST maintained a solid capital structure, improving its net financial balance and maintaining a credit rating well above investment grade, while both substantially investing to fuel business growth and increasing the dividend distribution. Ferro inspired and delivered on ST’s strategy of a focused product portfolio that led to the creation of Numonyx, a merger of the flash memory businesses of ST and Intel. He also drove the subsequent merger of Numonyx into Micron Technologies that allowed ST to improve its capital structure by about $1 billion and Numonyx’ employees to join a sustainable worldwide leader in memories. With ST, Ferro oversaw several major restructuring efforts that led to a consolidation of the number of silicon fabs from 17 to 8 and the reduction of the number of non-manufacturing sites by about one third. Focusing on execution and financial discipline, under his tenure as CFO, ST posted quarterly results within guidance for 33 quarters out of 35. Recognizing his credibility and care of public investors, in 2006 Ferro was recognized to be among the best European CFOs by Institutional Investor.

At Finmeccanica, the leading Italian high-tech engineering and manufacturing group and, at that time, a shareholder of SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics (now STMicroelectronics) from 1992 to 1996, Carlo Ferro gained extensive experience in Planning and Control, Corporate Finance and M&A. In fact, he was part of the ST IPO team in 1994 and had been associated as an expert to the ST Supervisory Board. Over the next three years, he held executive positions for Elsag Bailey Process Automation NV (EBPA), a global leader in process automation listed on the NYSE, first as Vice President for Strategic Planning, and later as Vice President for Planning and Control and principal financial officer, leading these functions in phases of acquisitions and consolidation until the merger between EBPA and ABB.

Ferro had been the Chairman of Incard SA, the sole Managing Director of ST Service Srl, a member of the Board and Chairman of the Audit Committee of ST-NXP Wireless and ST-Ericsson till February 2012. He has also been a member of the governance bodies of several companies, including STS (a manufacturing JV in China), ST’s affiliates in Singapore, Japan, France and Italy, a former joint-venture between ST and Hitachi, DNP Photomask Europe, and, earlier in his career, of several companies in process automation, engineering, transportation, electronic and power generation businesses.

A Swiss and Italian citizen, born in Savona, Italy, in 1961, Carlo Ferro is married with two children. A graduate in Business and Economics from the LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, where he served as a professor of Planning and Control and as an associate professor of Advanced Finance in various periods. He is a Certified Public Accountant registered in Italy.

Updated April 2013
 

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