Lorenzo Mariani will succeed Roberto Cingolani at the helm of Leonardo.
The Meloni government has decided to replace the head of the Italian defense and aerospace giant by appointing the latter with the former, who was already co-general manager of Leonardo with Cingolani from May 2023 until April 2025, as the new CEO of the former Finmeccanica group.
A long-time manager in the defense sector, Mariani had long been considered one of the most accredited candidates: Defense Minister Guido Crosetto recently claimed the nomination of Mariani as his first choice for the leadership of Leonardo in 2023. But at the time, the government opted for the former Minister of Energy Transition in the Draghi government as the head of Leonardo.
After assisting Cingolani as co-general manager from May 2023, Mariani left Leonardo a year ago to return to Mbda, the European missile group joint venture of Airbus (37.5%), Bae Systems (37.5%), and Leonardo (25%). This move was interpreted by some as a consequence of growing divergences at the then leadership of Piazza Monte Grappa.
Now, however, Lorenzo Mariani is ready to return to Leonardo to take on the top role. After all, “Leonardo is his home: in 34 years he has participated in the creation of products and plants, advancing his career through the metamorphosis of Finmeccanica into a global high-tech group. He has always worked there and in the partly owned Mbda,” Gianluca Di Feo recalls today on Repubblica.
All the details.
THE NEW LEADERSHIP OF LEONARDO
The turning point in Leonardo’s leadership comes with the presentation of the Treasury’s list for the renewal of the Board of Directors. Alongside the name of Lorenzo Mariani as the future CEO is that of Francesco Macrì for the presidency, replacing Stefano Pontecorvo.
WHO IS LORENZO MARIANI
Born in 1964, graduated with honors in Electronic Engineering in 1990, Lorenzo Mariani also has a background as an officer in the Navy. He is considered a key figure in the Italian and European defense industry. He boasts extensive experience gained within the Leonardo group and its subsidiaries.
From 1992 to 2002 he worked for Alenia and AMS as a Radar Systems Analyst, Designer and Integrator of Multifunction Naval Radars, and finally Sales Director, first for South America and then Europe/NATO, for the Land Systems Division.
Lorenzo’s previous experiences include the positions of Deputy General Manager (July 2010 – November 2011) and General Manager (December 2011 – December 2012) at Selex Integrated Systems, which he joined in 2006. All this after his first experience at Mbda, where from 2002 to 2005 he was Head of Product Strategy.
From January 2016 to September 2017 he headed the Land and Naval Defense Electronics Division of Leonardo, a role he had held from January 2013 to December 2015 at Selex Electronics Systems, before Selex-ES was merged into the One Company Leonardo.
From October 2017 Mariani served as Leonardo’s Commercial Director and from May 2018 was also appointed CEO of Leonardo International, which manages the Group’s international holdings. Afterwards, he was appointed Executive Group Director Sales & Business Development of Mbda and Managing Director of Mbda Italy from September 1, 2020, to June 1, 2023.
CROSETTO’S FIRST CHOICE ALREADY IN 2023 TO LEAD LEONARDO
As already mentioned, Mariani had long been considered the natural candidate to lead Leonardo. Defense Minister Crosetto recalled having supported him three years ago for the CEO position. On the sidelines of the Senate question time, when asked if Lorenzo Mariani was a suitable figure for the role, the minister responded: “you ask someone who proposed him three years ago.”
THE PARTNERSHIP WITH CINGOLANI AND EXIT FROM THE FORMER FINMECCANICA GROUP
Yet in 2023 the choice for the leadership of the Piazza Monte Grappa group fell on Roberto Cingolani, and Mariani was appointed co-general manager of Leonardo. Subsequently, he left the group, in a phase interpreted as marked by divergences with the outgoing CEO, to return to Mbda.
THE LAST PHASE AT MBDA, BEFORE TAKING THE LEAD AT LEONARDO
From April 2025 Mariani held the role of Executive Group Director Sales & Business Development and member of the Executive Committee of Mbda, as well as Managing Director of Mbda Italy.
And now the Treasury has designed him as the new CEO of Leonardo, in an “assessment that a manager with deep experience in the defense sector — [Mariani, ed.] – who started working at Leonardo when it was still called Finmeccanica, then moved to Mbda and subsequently returned to Leonardo, and with a very thorough knowledge of European military and industrial interlocutors (it should not be forgotten that Mbda is a Franco-Italian-German-British consortium), can represent an added value in this historic phase” observed Alessandro Marrone, head of the “Defense, Security and Space” program at Iai, to Startmag.
