SIA-SSB names Cordone and Grignani deputy MDs; De Lorenzo becomes director, payment systems

Nicola Cordone, currently Director of the Cards Business Unit, and Fabio Grignani, Chief Information Officer, have been appointed Deputy Managing Directors.

In addition, Mario De Lorenzo is appointed to the office of Director of Payment Systems for SIA-SSB.

The new appointments represent the final phase in the definition of roles and responsibilities in the Group's organizational structure.

Nicola Cordone, 41, who graduated in Electronic Engineering from Genoa University, adds the office of Deputy Managing Director of SIA-SSB to that of Director of the Cards Business Unit, taken on in May 2007.
He began his professional career as Senior Business Consultant for executive consulting projects at a number of companies including AT&T - Unisource, Siemens Telecomunicazioni, Italtel and Ansaldo.
In 1997, he began working for Servizi Interbancari (now CartaSì) as Development Manager of the new Integrated Call Center, subsequently becoming Products and Services Development Manager in the Issuing Division.
In 2000, he joined SSB as Director of the Issuing Division and in 2002 he was appointed Deputy General Manager.
Since 2003, Cordone has also held the office of Managing Director of SiNSYS, the company created as a joint venture between the leading European companies in the payment cards sector.
As of September 2007 he has also been Chairman of GBC, the Hungarian subsidiary of SIA-SSB, specializing in card processing and ATM/POS terminal management.

In addition to the position of Deputy Managing Director, Fabio Grignani, 46, an Electronic Engineering graduate from Milan Polytechnic, is also SIA-SSB's Chief Information Officer, with responsibility for providing IT systems, projects, corporate systems and architectures, plus ICT Governance and Support, with the objective of consolidating the company's technological leadership in European financial markets.

In total there are approximately 350 people employed in the areas under Grignani's responsibility.

Grignani previously held the office of Managing Director of Ge.S.I. and of R.IT, the ICT services companies of the RAS Group (from 1997 to 2003) and IT Manager at Accenture (1986 to 1997).
In September 2003, Grignani joined the management of the company then called SSB, as Director of IT & Operations and, subsequently, appointed Deputy Managing Director.

Mario De Lorenzo, 50, a graduate in Electronic Engineering from Milan Polytechnic, is appointed to the new position of Director of Payment Systems at SIA-SSB.

Following nearly twenty years of experience at IBM, he joined SIA in May 2003 and held various positions such as Executive Consultant, Director of the Project Management BU and Director of Central Payment Systems.
De Lorenzo is also contributing to SIA-SSB's development towards SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) and, specifically, was Program Manager working on the design and creation, on behalf of EBA Clearing, of STEP2, the first PE-ACH (Pan European Automated Clearing House) to manage retail payments at European level.
As part of his activities, he is also responsible for projects to update the financial system of a number of European Central Banks including the Central Bank of Romania, the Swedish and Norwegian Central Banks and, more recently, also the Central Bank of Egypt.

In this new position, he also manages NON-SEPA payment instruments, large databases and solutions for Inter-bank Corporate Banking (CBI)