Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España 
MADRID -- Cesar Alierta, one of Spain's most powerful businessmen, will step down as executive chairman of Spanish telco giant Telefonica after almost 16 years at the helm.He will be replaced by Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, currently chief operating officer and Alierta's right hand man, whose appointment will be confirmed at Telefonica's next board of directors meeting on April 8.The succession was proposed by Alierta, 70, “who considers Alvarez-Pallete as the best prepared executive to face the challenges arising from the...
Telefónica
José
María
Álvarez-Pallete
Chairman / CEO
On Álvarez-Pallete’s watch, the content drive of Spain’s Telefónica, Europe’s third-biggest telecom with €48.7 billion ($54 billion) revenues in 2018, continued apace. From September 2017 to October 2019, pay-TV unit Movistar Plus bowed 18 original series to add to its talent pool created by decades of free-to-air productions. With a Netflix carriage deal for Spain and Latin America, Telefónica places entertainment front and center for smart homes. Movistar originals helped it stanch pay-TV subscriber losses in Spain, where it posted nine consecutive quarters of subscriber growth by July 2019. But Spain is a hard pay-TV sell, and the real content-powered growth potential remains in Latin America, where Movistar announced its first original series in April. Subscribers for the OTT Movistar Play are growing fast.
