Eurona Group hires Rafael Franco and Jorge Ramos to boost its national and international expansion

They will lead the 4G and Hotspots business, respectively, which are crucial to the strategic plan.

It now has five major business units and a reduced board of directors, anticipating the future good governance regulations for listed companies

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With more than twenty years of professional experience in the finance and consulting sectorRafael Franco has an MBA from the Instituto de Empresa and is currently a founding partner of Arealia Consulting & Project, as well as the general manager of the multifamily office Batex España. In his new stage at the Eurona Group, Rafael will combine his knowledge of the world of franchises with an innovative approach from an outsider in the telco world.

 

Precisely, the 4G It is the area of ​​activity with the most growth margin of the company in the Spanish market, since, according to the forecasts of the strategic plan, it expects to increase its income to almost eight million euros in 2015, becoming the third source of incomeis the most important part of the Eurona Group.

 

For his part, Jorge Ramos will assume the direction of the activity of Hotspots, which includes the entire business of “outdoor” and “indoor” Wi-Fi, an area in which Grupo Eurona manages the wifi of the 28 airports Spaniards, the entire Wi-Fi network of the cities of Barcelona, ​​Zaragoza and Cartagena de Indias and a portfolio of 40.000 hotel rooms in Spain and Latin America, a region in which it is a reference in the Wi-Fi network management and operation activities in hotels.

 

Ramos, trained at IESE Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has almost twenty years of experience in large consulting firms such as Accenture and Everis, in addition to having held the position of director of Swisscom Hospitality Services for Spain and Portugal, a position in which he accumulated a great deal of knowledge about Wi-Fi in the hotel sector.

 

Changes to adapt to the new reality

Both signings are part of the extensive process of consolidating their organizational structure that Grupo Eurona is carrying out to adapt to the new reality of the company after completing the first phase of integration of Kubi Wireless and also to adapt to the new good governance standards of companies listed companies that will come into force next year.

 

With the new organizational structure, the company will become completely transversal, without differentiating between national and international business, which will have five business units that will group the main axes of activity (Satellite and Fixed Wireless; 4G; Hotspots; Eurona Digital and Engineering).

 

In addition, to ensure that all areas are transversal and synergies are created between them, five functional directions are established, which are TTechnology and Networks; Product and Marketing; Finance and Human Resources; Customer Operations and Systems, all of them at the same level of responsibility of the business units.

 

In adapting to the new regulations, the company becomes one of the first in the MAB to create an audit committee to comply with the future Law on Auditing Accounts that the Government is preparing, a measure that provides for greater control of the finances of the companies. public interest companies through the same stock market regulator, the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV).

 

In addition, in order to adapt to the new regulations, the board of directors is being restructured, reducing its number to eight members, including the representative of QMC Directorships, belonging to the QMC II fund and managed by N+1, which last November acquired 9,89% of the capital of Grupo Eurona.

 

Finally, to accelerate and strengthen the development of its strategic plan, Eurona Group will launch a debt issue of 12 million euros in the long term – between seven and ten years –, which will be used to finance the 4G business, the European Satellite Operator and to allocate funds to the amortization of expensive debt with the aim of reducing the company's liabilities.