Vodafone's (Coca) Colao ready to assume top dog status?

Interesting rumour/opinion piece over at StrategyEye this morning. They’re reporting a rumour that Vodafone’s deputy CEO, Vittorio Colao, is the front-runner to replace Mr Sarin later this year. If he does then that will be good news for me as I have a veritable BUNDLE of Coca Cola, Diet, Full Fat and so and so references to place with in SMS Text News headlines.

This could very much be a test of key shareholder reaction — much like the UK Government, particularly under leadership of Blair used to do: They’d find a favourite and trusted lobby journalist, knock him over an exclusive from a junior minister on a (usually contentious) policy they weren’t quite sure about. The journalist would take the story to his editor and, sure enough, since it was usually a corker of a policy, it would make the front page and often set the news agenda. Depending on reaction from a number of quarters, the Government would roll out a senior minister to either rubbish the idea (“It was something we considered, but, no, we won’t be doing this,”) or to take credit for it.

I know next to nothing about Vittorio, apart from the fact that he’s responsible for Vodafone Europe (up to 80% of Vodafone’s revenue).

At least they’d save on the recruitment fees, right?

Here’s StrategyEye’s perspective on our man, Sarin:

Vodafone has not commented on how long Sarin is expected to remain in his position, but analysts predict that his rocky performance in recent years will see the company looking for a replacement to boost shareholder confidence. Sarin’s recent moves to expand Vodafone into emerging markets have been popular with shareholders, but his public and internal image has suffered in recent years due to growth that failed to meet expectations.