Executive team

César Alierta Izuel

Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Telefónica

Born May 5, 1945, César Alierta holds a degree in law from the University of Zaragoza and an MBA from Columbia University in New York (1970).

He has been Executive Chairman and CEO of Telefónica since July, 2000 and is also a member of the Boards of Directors of China Unicom and Telecom Italia.

Since September, 2010, he has been an independent board member, chairman of the Remuneration Committee and a member of the Nominations Committee of the Board of Directors of International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG), the company resulting from the merger of Iberia and British Airways.

Mr. Alierta is also a member of the Colombia Business School Board of Overseers and chairman of the Social Board of the UNED (Spain`s Distance Education University).

Between 1970 and 1985, he was General Manager of the Capital Markets division at Banco Urquijo in Madrid. Subsequently, Mr. Alierta was the Chairman and founder of Beta Capital, which he combined as from 1991 with his post as Chairman of the Spanish Financial Analysts' Association. He has also been a member of the Board of Directors and Standing Committee of the Madrid Stock Exchange.

In 1996, César Alierta became Chairman of Tabacalera, S.A., where he directed the cross-border merger with the French company, Seita. The result of this merger was Altadis, where he served as Chairman until July, 2000 when he was appointed Chairman of Telefónica. He has been a member of the Telefónica Board of Directors since 1997.

Among his most recent awards, in June 2010 César Alierta received the Americas Society Gold Medal in New York, in recognition of his important contribution to the growth and development of Latin America. Five years earlier, also in New York, Alierta had received "The Global Spanish Entrepreneur" award from the Spain/US Chamber of Commerce. This prize was given in recognition of the Telefónica Group's success in joining the NY Dow Jones Global Titans 50 index. Telefónica is the first Spanish company and one of the few European ones to belong to this index, which is comprised of the 50 biggest companies in the world.