Codere appoints Luis Villalba as CFO for business transformation 

Grupo Codere continues the restructuring of its executive leadership team, announcing the appointment of Luis Villalba as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

The appointment sees Villalba replace the incumbent CFO, Óscar Fernández de Llano, who resigned from Codere’s leadership team during H1 proceedings.

A 25-year executive in financial management, Villalba joins Codere from food and olive oil exporter Deoleo Group, where he served as the Financial Director and an executive committee member of the Spanish multinational.

Further experience has seen Villalba lead Plc auditing and business recovery units as an executive of ‘Big-Four’ accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

“In his new role as CFO of Grupo Codere, Luis Villalba will take on the challenge of leading the company’s financial strategy after the refinancing,” read Codere’s announcement.

H1 trading saw Codere governance overhaul the firm’s C-level executive team, welcoming the appointment of Gonzaga Higuero as the new Group CEO.

The Spanish heritage gambling group continues its corporate transformation programme, with bondholders granting a further €100m liquidity extension for 2022.

Codere governance vowed to maintain all business units operating in Europe (Spain and Italy) and South America (Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, and Panama) as part of its 2023-to-2027 recovery strategy.

A key target sees Codere outline that its transformed business will become profit-effective from 2025 onwards.  The company is expected to announce its H1 2023 Interim results on 31 August.