Biography

From November 2018 to December 2020 Giovanni Barra served as Chief Executive Officer of Sila Group, a multinational automotive company into the making of manual, automatic and electronic shifters, with Engineering centers and Plants in China, India, Poland, Italy, Brasil and Argentina.

From April to October 2018 he served as President and Chief Officer of Hyva Capital Equipment, to leading the integration of a new business conglomerate. Formerly – from 2013 to 2018 – Giovanni Barra had been President of Nidec Industrial Solutions and Chief Executive Officer of Nidec-ASI, formerly Ansaldo Sistemi Industriali SpA, a global key player into the making and selling of large Electric Motors and Generators, Power Electronics and Inverters, Systems and Industrial Automation for Oil&Gas, Steel making, Energy Storage from Renewable Energy and a variety of industrial applications/markets. Nidec Industrial Solutions has Operations in Europe, Middle East, Russia, China, India, Japan, North America. Nidec ASI’s parent company is Nidec Corporation, a Japanese Group publicly traded at Nikkei.

Giovanni was born in 1960 and graduated in Economics, Marketing and Commercial Sciences in Turin, Italy. He worked for over 25 years in large international corporations, serving for more than 10 years as a senior executive for a large Corporation in the USA and Brasil; then back in Italy as Chief Executive Officer of medium sized Companies.
Giovanni Barra is an international hands-on business leader with experience in building, leading and growing large multicultural/national teams. He has an EBIT-proven know how in leading people collectively throughout organizational growth, by coaching teams successfully beyond their own performance expectations, with seemingly endless energy.
Giovanni went through several management positions in different businesses and corporations, driving thorough turn-arounds, often through cultural and organizational changes, with proven financial and commercial performance improvement.
Giovanni masters both mass-production and make-to-order businesses of industrial machinery, construction equipment, power electronics, electrical motors throughout complex and multi-cultural organizations.
In his first 10-years tenure Giovanni Barra was exposed to growing assignments throughout FIAT Group’s main businesses. In 1999 he becomes Vice President of New Holland Inc (UK-based), an agricultural-construction equipment company of FIAT Group that in 2000 merged with Case Corporation becoming CNH (Case New Holland) and in 2013 CNH Industrial (NYSE: CNHI).
For over 10 years he works as Vice President for CNH in the USA, and as CEO of CNH Latin America Construction Equipment in Brazil, and then again as Executive Vice President in the USA from 2006 to September 2009, serving in the Executive Committee too.
After over 20 years within Fiat Group (turned into FIAT Chrysler Automobiles), in 2009 he leaves the USA-based CNH Industrial and moves back to Europe, serving as CEO of Biesse Group, an Italian public company into both the make-to-order and mass-production businesses of industrial CNC machinery and mechatronics components.
In 2013 he joins Nidec ASI as Chief Operating Officer, and then serving as CEO since June 2014.

Skills & Expertise

Core Competencies

Among skills and competences, Giovanni Barra has shown proven experiences in building leadership and process conditions for management teams to keep on improving commercial and financial performance in the long run.

First hand competencies on:

  • commercial distribution/network development
  • marketing in mass production business
  • process reengineering
  • large project management and problem solving
  • large merger/acquisitions and their integrations
  • international joint ventures
  • product quality and lean manufacturing
  • product development processes
  • business leadership over both mass-production and make-to-order businesses

Fluently speaking Italian, English, Portuguese, with fair understanding of Spanish, French.

Main Values

Giovanni Barra’s main values are Integrity, deliver as a way of life, leading and coaching by extended teamwork participation, coaching people beyond their own performance expectations, competitiveness, ownership and accountability on commitments, awareness that details make a difference.