(Bloomberg) -- Davide Campari NV Chief Executive Officer Matteo Fantacchiotti resigned effective immediately after just five months at the helm of the Italian beverages group.
Fantacchiotti, 52, is stepping down for personal reasons after taking the top job at the company in April, Campari said on Wednesday. His short stint as CEO followed the long tenure of Bob Kunze-Concewitz, who expanded the Aperol maker through a series of acquisitions.
Shares of Campari fell as much as 5.6% on Wednesday in Milan.
Campari’s board named Chief Financial Officer Paolo Marchesini and Fabio Di Fede, general counsel and business development officer, as interim co-CEOs, while Kunze-Concewitz will chair a leadership transition committee, according to a statement.
The resignation comes after Campari shares fell on Friday as Fantacchiotti spoke bearishly about the US market at a conference organized by Bank of America. The company later issued a statement clarifying that he was referring to sector trends rather than company performance.
His comments that softness in US demand was persisting “slightly longer than expected” also pushed down the stocks of rivals Pernod Ricard SA, Diageo Plc and Remy Cointreau SA.
Fantacchiotti is a drinks industry veteran who previously held positions at companies including Nestle Waters, Diageo and Carlsberg before joining Campari in 2020 as group managing director of the Asia Pacific region.
In an interview with Bloomberg in April, Fantacchiotti had said he wanted to tap the “enormous” potential of Aperol and focus on growth in Asia while hunting for development opportunities in the US.
In July, Campari disappointed the market after missing expectations on earnings, which it blamed on inclement weather and delays to agave supply contracts.
The resignation “comes as complete surprise, and it’s negative per se and also in the context of a generalized slowdown of the sector,” said Margherita Strazzari, an asset manager at Sempione SIM.
“The choice of CFO Marchesini and Di Fede as interim co-CEOs is correct as the market wants stability and continuity, especially in a sector that’s been battered by weather, changing consumer habits and inflation,” she said.
Fantacchiotti had “been in situ for less than six months, contending with a tough trading environment and transformation — and not universally applauded — acquisition of Courvoisier,” said James Edwardes Jones, an analyst at RBC Europe.
The stock tumbled earlier in the year after the beverage maker concluded a share and bond placement to finance that purchase, its largest-ever acquisition.
--With assistance from Joel Leon and Daniele Lepido.
(Updates with Courvoisier in last two paragraphs.)
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