Telecom Italia chief Guido Rossi said on Friday he could quit his job after the telecommunication group's controlling shareholder moved to sack him.
"I'm thinking about resigning," Rossi told reporters a day after tyre group Pirelli, which controls Telecom Italia's board, looked set to remove him at a shareholder meeting on April 16.
"The only thing left for me to do is to decide whether to leave at the April 16 meeting or beforehand," said Rossi, who has been at the Telecom Italia helm since Marco Tronchetti Provera abruptly resigned as chairman last September.
Tronchetti Provera heads Pirelli which holds 80% of Olympia, a holding company which in turn has a controlling 18% stake in debt-laden Telecom Italia.
Pirelli on Wednesday issued a list of directors for election at Telecom Italia on April 16 but the list did not include Rossi.
On Sunday, Pirelli revealed that it was in talks with America's AT&T and Mexico's America Movil with a view to selling them 66% of its stake in Olympia.
Members of Premier Romano Prodi's centre-left government expressed deep concern over the news, making it clear they did not like the idea of the nation's biggest telecoms group falling into foreign hands.
Government spokesman Silvio Sircana subsequently said Telecom Italia board decisions had to be respected, even if it meant control passing to a foreign group, while the centre-right opposition said there could be no interference with market forces.
But Rossi said on Thursday that he had not even been consulted about the potential deal.
"Nobody told me about it beforehand. All the dealings took place outside Telecom - how can they call that the market?" he asked.
Rossi, a respected troubleshooter and corporate lawyer who oversaw Telecom's privatisation in 1997 under Prodi's first government, said that Pirelli's move was of "doubtful, very doubtful legal legitimacy".
Tronchetti Provera left Telecom following a bitter clash with Prodi over an unexpected U-turn in company strategy.
Meanwhile, France Telecom refused to comment on media reports that it was considering a counter offer to Pirelli.
The Wall Street Journal said in an article that both France Telecom and Spain's Telefonica were considering separate moves on their Italian counterpart.
According to the Financial Times, Pirelli tried earlier to sell Telecom Italia to Telefonica but the operation collapsed following opposition from Rossi and others at the Italian group.
