Vasile formalizes his departure from Mediaset at the end of 2022 after 40 years in the company

Paolo Vasile is leaving Mediaset Spain, as EL MUNDO anticipated.

The CEO of the audiovisual group "has communicated today to the Board of Directors, after more than 24 years in the company and exactly 40 years in the Italian parent company, his decision to conclude his management at the head of the company at the end of this year", he has made official the company this Wednesday at market close.

Pier Silvio Berlusconi, CEO of MFE-MediaForEurope, son of the founding tycoon Silvio Berlusconi and architect of the remodeling of this audiovisual conglomerate, has congratulated the director for his work, with top executive functions in Spain since 1999: "We thank with gratitude and emotion Paolo Vasile for the enormous work carried out in our group. Paolo has contributed decisively to the constitution of Mediaset España and its IPO, he has guided with a sure hand the growth of a company that

wish Paolo all the best for the future and I personally embrace him with great esteem and affection".

This exit fits with the information advanced by this newspaper, before which the Italian company could only point out that it was not a "dismissal", a term that this newspaper never used.

The new Mediaset España is formed in Italy, dictated by Pier Silvio Berlusconi, current strong man of MFE-MediaForEurope, a new group that aspires to gain a foothold on the continent.

The

, created in 2019, is based in the Netherlands.

In the process, the Italian parent company

.

Although as CEO Vasile has made and unmade in the company with little opposition (and backed by his economic data), since this year he has lived with a new president, Borja Prado, who was at the head of Endesa for 10 years (also with Italian approval, of the electric company Enel).

Prado's profile has little to do with that of his predecessor, Alejandro Echevarría, who had been in the post since 1996, even before Vasile landed in Spain (1998).

Echevarría carried out an institutional and representative role that had little to do with what Vasile had in the company, always attentive to any cost reduction, often intervening in the day-to-day work of the grid and in permanent contact with the star presenters of his confidence.

In 2014, Vasile also became the company's chief

officer, through PubliEspaña and reaffirmed thanks to the departures of Giuseppe Tringali, first, and Marco Seniga, later.

However, in recent times the executive has lost his main argument for subordinating the commercial model to the audience:

.

The

do not work as before and, diluted the shift format that should set all the programming in motion, the pieces of the gear begin to fail.

After the publication of this newspaper about his departure, Vasile tried to dissociate it from the will of the family of investors that controls the company: "Mediaset and the Berlusconis have treated me like a son," he said.

"Since September 1, 1998, when I arrived in Spain, Mediaset has been a success. Even if Jesus Christ came with the mitre, the Berlusconis would not kick me out of Mediaset. In March I will be 40 years old for them, 15 in Rome and 25 in Madrid. [Silvio]

. Someone who has been working in your company for 40 years is not thrown out," he said in a telephone conversation.

Vasile, who turns 70 next year, maintains that he intended to leave Mediaset España before the pandemic, in 2019, but that the covid crisis cut short that possibility.

However, sources from the company and the sector have been pointing out the attachment that the executive had with Mediaset (and his reluctance to abandon it): as this newspaper reported, until before the holidays, Vasile had not started to put into circulation the possibility that this was his last year.

This month, the step has finally been taken.

Telecinco, the leading network for most of Vasile's career as CEO, ceased to be so soon a year ago, surpassed in November 2021 by Antena 3 and since then uninterruptedly every month.

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