About

Alitalia is Italy’s largest airline and a member of the Sky team alliance, in 2017 it carried 21.3 million passengers. On May 2nd 2017, the airline was admitted to the administration procedure provided by Italian law for large insolvent companies. Paolo Quaini’s wide-ranging portfolio and previous bankruptcy experience made him the perfect person to take on this task as he was called to join Alitalia in June 2017. Not one to be intimidated by a challenge, Quaini saw this event as an opportunity to grow and learn from the business in very short timing, he was immediately placed in the front office where he had to hit the ground running: ‘I really call it an adventure because jumping into a company that has an insolvency procedure can be an ultimate challenge. It’s kind of a gym for lawyers, providing you with everything you need to practice your hard and soft skills’ says Quaini. Since joining he has educated the business about what the procedure means, equipping the company to efficiently support the business and act as a guardian to compliance. During his career, Quaini has accumulated his experience within a wide variety of diversified sectors, avidly changing sectors to enrichen and widen his horizon and widen his culture on a range of businesses. Quaini took on his first in-house role at steel industry player Techint in 1998, after spending two years there, he sent up and ran his own legal practice for two years before moving back to Techint for his first leadership position as legal department director within the plant making division. In 2006 he joined multinational Italian dairy and food corporation Parmalat, contributing to the rescue and turnaround of Parmalat, the largest bankruptcy case in Europe with his contribution of the legal function considered imperative to the tackling of this big challenge. After a brief spell at Cementir Holdings he then turned to the fashion industry where he went on to take on the role of group of group general counsel at OTB, holding company of an Italian fashion group operating under the brands of Diesel, Marni, Maison Margiela and Viktor&Rolf, and – as licensee – of DSquared, Just Cavalli and Vivienne Westwood. His five year role here was defined by his contribution to the complete overhaul of the governance function within the group. Before starting his career as in-house counsel, Quaini also practiced law for private firms in Italy and, as visiting lawyer, in the US.