Grandi Stazioni Retail

Identifying and repatriating elite Italian leadership talent is a cornerstone of Elevate Talent’s advisory practice. This engagement highlights our role as a trusted partner to global investors navigating high-stakes transitions. By prioritizing strategy over simple recruitment and maintaining absolute discretion, we didn't just fill a vacancy—we enabled a premier global leader’s return to her home market to helm one of Italy’s most vital infrastructure assets.

Following the acquisition of Grandi Stazioni Retail by long-term infrastructure investors OMERS and DWS, the company entered a critical phase of strategic repositioning. The ambition was to evolve GSR from a best-in-class asset manager into an experience-led retail, media, and data platform at the heart of Italy’s mobility ecosystem. This "talent paradox" meant that traditional candidate pools were insufficient; retail leaders often lacked institutional gravity, while infrastructure executives frequently lacked commercial, customer-centric vision. Compounding these challenges was a strict confidentiality barrier; because the role was still occupied at the project's inception, a standard market-facing search was impossible, as any leak posed significant reputational and operational risks to the investors.

A global strategic mapping was conducted across airports and transport hubs, travel retail ecosystems, and large-scale mixed-use destinations. The focus was on Italian executives operating internationally and Italian speaking leaders with the governance maturity, commercial depth, and cultural intelligence required for Italy’s infrastructure environment. The quality of this work led OMERS and DWS to formally confirm and expand the mandate, recognising it as a value-creation exercise rather than a recruitment process. Elena Sorlini emerged as the only candidate fully aligned with the ambition and complexity of the platform. Her experience as CEO of Abu Dhabi Airports positioned her among a very small group of global leaders with proven capability across sovereign environments, multi-asset infrastructure, and commercial ecosystem monetisation. Her leadership style combines operational rigour, strategic clarity, and low-ego execution.