Domenico Scala (born 1965 in Basel, Switzerland) is a Swiss-Italian manager in the
biopharmaceutical
A biopharmaceutical, also known as a biological medical product, or biologic, is any pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or semisynthesized from biological sources. Different from totally synthesized pharmaceuticals, t ...
industry, and the former chairman of the
FIFA Audit & Compliance Committee.
Early life
Scala has a university degree in economics from the
University of Basel
The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universit ...
. After his studies he worked for Nestlé, Panalpina and Roche, where he held various senior leadership positions.
Dental appointments
In 2003, he became CFO of Syngenta AG and in 2007 CEO of the Swedish-Swiss dental company
Nobel Biocare
Nobel Biocare is a company that manufactures dental implants and CAD/CAM-based individualized prosthetics and is headquartered in Kloten, Switzerland near the Zürich Airport. Nobel Biocare in its current form was founded in 2002. It originates ...
, specializing in dental implants. He is on the advisory board of
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
in Boston, the second largest dental faculty in North America. Since November 2011 he is Vice-Chairman of
Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and since January 2015 Chairman of i-net innovation networks Switzerland. In 2004, he was one of a selected few executives to be named "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Football
In May 2013 the FIFA congress elected Scala as chairman of the Audit & Compliance Committee of
FIFA,
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
's international governing body. The committee has the task of overseeing FIFA's business practices. On June 2, 2015, he assumed the oversight/leadership of a reform program within FIFA. On September 10, 2015, he published a comprehensive governance reform report on FIFA. On February 26, 2016 the FIFA congress approved significant governance reforms, which have largely been devised by Domenico Scala along his reform "blueprint" published in September 2015. Scala's proposals are essentially looking to reshape FIFA along the lines of a modern corporation. Scala's most significant reforms are to introduce term limits and to split the governing executive committee along the lines of large corporations. They have a board to set strategy and oversee the work of an executive board, which conducts the day-to-day business. Domenico Scala has also called for the six confederations to themselves undergo reforms, including integrity checks for their officials along the lines of those introduced at FIFA for all elected officials.
In an interview published on 7 June 2015, Scala stated that
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
and
Qatar
Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it ...
would possibly no longer be eligible to host the
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...
competitions in 2018 and 2022 if evidence of bribery was proven, saying "Should there be evidence that the awards to Qatar and Russia came only because of bought votes, then the awards could be cancelled."
Scala resigned from his position at FIFA on May 14, 2016.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scala, Domenico
Living people
Swiss businesspeople
FIFA officials
1965 births