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Vice Chairman, Verizon Communications. Frederic V. Salerno is vice chairman and former chief financial officer of Verizon Communications. Prior to the Bell Atlantic/GTE merger, Mr. Salerno was senior executive vice president and chief financial officer of Bell Atlantic. He was a member of the Office of the Chairman, with responsibility for the company's strategic planning efforts, business development, and finance. He also had oversight of the company's portfolio of international wireline investments.
Mr. Salerno served as a lead negotiator in three of the most significant mergers in business history: the 1997 merger of Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, Bell Atlantic's merger with GTE, and the combination of the U.S. wireless assets of Bell Atlantic and Vodafone AirTouch into the country's largest wireless provider, Verizon Wireless. He also directed Bell Atlantic's successful efforts to realize the annual expense savings, capital efficiencies, and revenue gains resulting from the merger with NYNEX.
Besides his work on the mergers, Mr. Salerno has been recognized for his financial leadership in devising the use of exchangeable notes, complex financial structures that enabled Bell Atlantic to monetize two major investments.
Prior to his appointment as Bell Atlantic's chief financial officer, Mr. Salerno was vice chairman of finance and business development at NYNEX, a position he assumed in 1994. He had served as vice chairman of NYNEX and president of Worldwide Services since March 1991.
A native New Yorker, Mr. Salerno joined New York Telephone in 1965 and was elected vice president in 1983, when he directed the divestiture of the company from the Bell System. In 1985, he was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer of New England Telephone. In 1987, Mr. Salerno was appointed president and chief executive officer of New York Telephone.
Mr. Salerno is a member of the boards of AVNET, Inc.; Bear Stearns Company, Inc.; Viacom, Inc.; and Manhattan College.
An active participant in support of community and educational issues, Mr. Salerno in 1988 was named chairman by then-Governor Mario Cuomo of New York's Temporary State Commission on the Distribution of State Aid to Local School Districts. In 1990, former Governor Cuomo appointed him chairman of the board of trustees of the State University of New York where he served until February 1996. Mr. Salerno is a trustee of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund and has served as chairman of the Archdiocese of New York's Partnership for Quality Education Campaign. In September 1999, the National Italian American Foundation gave him its Special Achievement Award for Humanitarian Service.
In 1997, Governor George Pataki appointed Mr. Salerno to serve on the state's International Business Development Council. He is also a member of the American Association of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta, an international relief organization with permanent observer status in the United Nations.
Mr. Salerno graduated from Manhattan College with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and holds an M.B.A. from Adelphi University. | 