Paolo Scaroni is an Italian executive with wide experience running European businesses. Currently chief executive officer of Eni—the international oil and gas company, listed on the Milan and New York stock exchanges—he was previously the head of Italy's leading electric utility, Enel, and before that nursed the troubled UK glassmaker Pilkington back to corporate health. Scaroni first got to know Pilkington as CEO of Italy's Techint (the two companies ran a joint venture in the late 1980s), though he acquired his early knowledge of the glass industry at France's Saint-Gobain, where he held a number of appointments, culminating in the presidency of the flat-glass division.

Scaroni's record at Pilkington and Enel makes him well qualified to talk about corporate turnarounds. Eni, which he joined in June 2005, represents a different sort of challenge. While Pilkington had experienced some degree of difficulty and Enel needed a strategic redirection, his present company was already doing well when he assumed its reins, just over a year ago, and had no obvious need for a sharp change in direction: powered by surging oil prices and a significant rerating of its shares, it was already hugely successful under his predecessor. Thanks to assets in (among...