Paolo Scaroni

Boards in capital-intensive industries are being asked to decarbonise on a political timetable, fund the transition through volatile commodity cycles, and stay supplied through a fracturing energy map. The textbook answers stop working when the gas comes from a sanctioned country and the renewables build-out lags the policy commitment. Few people have made these decisions at the scale of a national champion, with sovereign and shareholder pressure on both sides.

Paolo Scaroni is the former CEO of Eni and Enel and current Chairman of Enel and A.C. Milan, who helps boards think through energy security, the transition timetable and geopolitical risk in regulated, capital-intensive industries.

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Why organisations work with Paolo Scaroni

  • He has run two of Europe’s largest energy companies, Enel from 2002 to 2005 and Eni from 2005 to 2014, through privatisation, restructuring and the early phase of the energy transition.
  • He brings a working view of natural gas as a transition fuel from inside the boardrooms that bought, sold and shipped it, not from the outside as an analyst.
  • His current chairmanship of Enel and nine years as Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co give him an unusually current read on capital allocation, M&A and governance in the European energy sector.
  • He has sat on the boards of Veolia, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom, Assicurazioni Generali and the London Stock Exchange, which gives him cross-sector reference points few energy speakers can offer.
  • Discussions are pragmatic rather than ideological, useful for boards trying to reconcile net zero commitments with capital, supply and political reality.

Biography highlights

  • CEO of Enel from May 2002 to May 2005 and CEO of Eni from 2005 to 2014.
  • Chairman of Enel since May 2023; Chairman of A.C. Milan since July 2018.
  • Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co Group from May 2014 to May 2023.
  • CEO of Pilkington plc in London from 1997 to 2002, leading the turnaround of one of the world’s largest flat glass manufacturers; earlier CEO of Techint from 1985 to 1996.
  • Past non-executive director at Veolia Environment, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom and Assicurazioni Generali; former Vice Chairman of the London Stock Exchange.
  • Cavaliere del Lavoro (2004) and member of the Légion d’honneur (2007); Bocconi graduate and Columbia Business School MBA.

Biography

European energy is being asked to do three things at once: decarbonise, stay secure and remain affordable. Few executives have made those trade-offs at the scale Paolo Scaroni has. As CEO of Enel from 2002 and then of Eni from 2005 to 2014, he ran Italy’s two largest energy companies through privatisation, restructuring and the first wave of the climate agenda.

At Enel he abandoned the multi-utility model and pushed the group back into core energy, set up a dedicated wind business, and brought the company into the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. At Eni he tilted the portfolio away from oil toward natural gas, framing gas as a transition fuel, and the group’s net worth rose from EUR 39 billion to EUR 61 billion over his tenure. Eni was added to the Carbon Performance Leadership Index in 2012.

After Eni he spent nine years as Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co, advising on European deals across the energy and industrial sectors, before being appointed Chairman of Enel in May 2023. He has chaired A.C. Milan since 2018, including through the club’s 2022 Scudetto and the change of ownership to RedBird Capital. Past non-executive seats at Veolia, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom, Assicurazioni Generali and the London Stock Exchange give him a working view of governance across regulated industries.

His public position on the energy transition is unusually direct: renewables alone will not get Europe to its CO2 targets, energy efficiency and nuclear have to be part of the answer, and gas is the realistic bridge. That argument carries weight because he had to allocate capital against it, not just write about it.

Key speaking topics

  • Energy transition and energy security
  • Geopolitical and regulatory risk in energy markets
  • Natural gas, nuclear and the realistic path to net zero
  • Large-scale transformation in legacy industries
  • Board governance and stakeholder management in regulated sectors
  • Capital allocation in capital-intensive industries
  • European industrial competitiveness

Ideal for

  • Boards and executive committees in energy, utilities, industrials and infrastructure
  • CFOs, heads of strategy and corporate development weighing transition capex
  • Investor and lender audiences focused on European energy and industrial credit
  • Senior leadership teams reframing decarbonisation strategy against geopolitical risk

Audience outcomes

  • A grounded read on where European energy security and the transition timetable actually meet.
  • A sharper view of how natural gas, nuclear and renewables fit together in a credible decarbonisation plan.
  • Boardroom-tested judgement on geopolitical and regulatory risk in capital-intensive industries.
  • A reference frame from someone who has chaired and run companies on both sides of the energy table.

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