Giovanni Soccodato has become MBDA Executive Group Director Sales & Business Development and Managing Director of MBDA Italy, effective 01 June 2023.
Reporting directly to MBDA Chief Executive Officer Eric Béranger, he also becomes a member of the Executive Committee of MBDA. Giovanni Soccodato succeeds Lorenzo Mariani, who has become CoGeneral Manager of Leonardo with the responsibility for the newly established General Business & Operations Department. Mariani will also represent Leonardo on the MBDA Group Board, and will become Chairman of the Board of Directors of MBDA Italy.
As Executive Group Director Sales & Business Development, Soccodato will lead an integrated multinational team responsible for generating the order intake to sustain the long-term performance of MBDA, the understanding of customers' operational needs, and the development of the most effective solutions to meet current and future operational requirements. As Managing Director of MBDA Italia, Soccodato will be the legal representative of the company in Italy; in this role he will lead relations with the Italian customer and industrial community. As responsible of the company operations in Italy, he will ensure business continuity, competitiveness and coherence of company policies from a national perspective.
Eric Béranger, CEO of MBDA said: “I am delighted to welcome Giovanni Soccodato into the Executive Committee of MBDA. I am sure that, thanks to his personal and professional skills, his long career in numerous top positions in Leonardo and his great expertise in the defence and strategic sectors, Giovanni will provide a decisive contribution to developing our global positioning as a leading integrated defence company in Europe and maintaining the success of MBDA in Italy and in the world.”
“I also want to take this opportunity to thank Lorenzo Mariani for his fundamental support and contribution in having pushed MBDA to unprecedented levels of commercial positioning, which consolidates the company as a market leader in the complex weapon systems sector,” Béranger added.
Soccodato joins MBDA after having spent his career in positions of increasing importance within Leonardo (formerly Finmeccanica). Since June 2019, he held the role of Chief Strategic Equity Officer, following strategic joint venture activities, including MBDA. From 2005 to 2019, he was Executive Vice President of Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions, with additional responsibilities in the areas of Improvement & Processes, Innovation and Corporate Sales.
Prior to that he held various strategic positions within Alenia Marconi Systems (AMS, a JV between former Finmeccanica and Marconi Electronic Systems, then Bae Systems), including: Business Integration, Business Improvement, IT & Quality, and Sales, finally becoming also Vice Chairman and General Manager of the Italian branch of AMS, from 2004 to 2005.
Having more recently held the position of Deputy Chairman into the Board of MBDA Group, representing Leonardo, Soccodato has an excellent knowledge of the company, which he has followed since contributing to its establishment in 2001. Soccodato began his career in 1986 in the Software Engineering unit of Alenia Spazio (Selenia Spazio), after graduating with honours in Computer Science at the University of Pisa.
MBDA is a unique multi-national European group, a world-leader in the field of complex weapon systems, playing a key role in keeping nations safe. Created in the spirit of international co-operation, MBDA and its more than 14,000 employees work together to support the national sovereignty of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, and other allied countries worldwide. As an accelerator for innovation, MBDA is the only European group capable of designing and manufacturing complex weapons to meet the full range of current and future operational requirements of the three armed forces (land, sea and air).
MBDA is owned by Airbus (37.5%), BAE Systems (37.5%) and Leonardo (25%).
