MasterCard Appoints Alfredo Gangotena as Senior Vice President & General Manager, Asia/Pacific

MasterCard International has appointed Alfredo Gangotena as senior vice president & general manager, Asia/Pacific, based in Singapore. In this capacity, Gangotena will be responsible for strategic planning, acceleration of growth and development of innovative businesses and partners across the region, reporting to André Sekulic, MasterCards president, Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa.Prior to joining MasterCard, Gangotena was the Chief Executive Officer of Priceline.com in Asia, operated by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa. He joined the Internet venture in 2000 from the German multinational conglomerate, Henkel, where he was President and CEO, Asia Pacific from 1995 to 2000. At Priceline.com, Gangotena built a solid management team of 65, which concluded negotiations with 34 international airlines and more than 6,000 hotels region wide. He successfully launched Priceline in Hong Kong and Singapore in 2003, and paved the way for forthcoming launches in Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and Korea. After the first three months, Priceline achieved positive gross margins and the company is on track to break even a year ahead of schedule. In his five years prior as the Asia Pacific head of Henkel, Gangotena grew the Asian business from US$470 million to US$1.1 billion. He managed a staff of 8,500 across the region and focused on building the business in China through seven new joint ventures between 1996 and 1998. During his term, Henkel achieved market leadership in China in a number of key consumer categories including detergents, children’s cosmetics, hair colorants and deodorants, as well as the industrial leader in oleo-chemicals. Outside China, he made acquisitions in Japan, Korea and Australia and put in place a regional organization. Previous corporations that Gangotena made significant contributions to include Proctor & Gamble, where he held several senior marketing and management positions between 1978 and 1992; The Walt Disney Company, as Vice President and Marketing Director of Disneyland Paris; and PolyGram France (now Vivendi Universal), where he was Chief Executive Officer. Gangotena, 49, a French national, has worked in Asia, Europe and in the United States. He is fluent in English, French and Spanish, and holds two Master of Science degrees, the first in Industrial Engineering from Ecole Centrale Paris, France, and the other in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, USA.