José Álvarez-Pallete is Chairman & CEO of Telefónica S.A since April 2016 and member of the Board of Directors since July 2006.
He is executing a deep transformation of Telefónica, one of the top 10 global telcos worldwide, into a technology company. As a firm advocate of a human-centric digitalisation, he is leading the debate on the safe and ethical use of data and Artificial Intelligence. José Álvarez-Pallete has called for a new digital bill of rights to ensure nobody is left behind in the fourth industrial revolution.
He joined the Telefónica Group in 1999 as a General Manager of Finance for Telefónica Internacional. Later that same year he became Chief Financial Officer of Telefónica S.A. In 2002 he was appointed Chairman and CEO of Telefónica Internacional. Between 2006 and 2011 he was Managing Director of Telefónica Latin America. He was appointed Chairman and CEO of Telefónica Europe in 2011, and was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Telefónica, S.A. in 2012.
He began his professional career with auditors Arthur Young in 1987, before joining Benito & Monjardín / Kidder, Peabody & Co. in 1988. He joined Cemex in 1995. In 1998 he was promoted to General Manager for Administration and Finance responsible for the Cemex Group´s interests in Indonesia.
He has a degree in Economics from the Complutense University of Madrid. He also studied Economics at the Free University of Brussels, in Belgium, and holds an International Management Programme from IPADE.
Among many other distinctions, in 2016 he was named Spain’s ‘Best CEO’ by Forbes magazine and received the Asociación Española de Directivos’ ‘Manager of the Year’ award in the Large Corporations category in 2019.
Telefónica, S.A. is a Spanish broadband and telecommunications provider with operations in Europe, Asia, North America and South America,. Operating globally, it is the sixth-largest mobile network provider in the world. The company started as a public telecommunications company. Its head office is in the Distrito Telefónica in Madrid.[2][3]
