(AGI) Rome, Oct 9 - The Board of Directors of AGI has a newmanaging director. Alessandro Pica was elected by the board ofCristiana Argentino, Marco Bardazzi, Raffaella Leone, MassimoMondazzi and Mr Pica. Massimo Mondazzi was confirmed aspresident of the Italian news agency, announced oil and gascompany Eni. Mr Pica, director general of AGI sinceMarch 2011, replaces Gianni Di Giovanni, who becomes head ofinternational relations at Eni Washington. Mr Pica, who wasborn in Rome in 1964, specialises in foreign policy and digitalinformation and African and Middle Eastern communication inparticular. His career has evolved around publishing. Hestarted as marketing and innovation advisor to the Italiannational and regional press. He went on to work as salesmanager for Italian news agency ANSA in the media and marketsectors. He was responsible for relations with majorshareholders until the startup of a venture between AssociatedPress and the e.Biscom Group, now TMNews, and was directorgeneral until 2003. He was UNESCO delegate for thereconstruction and reorganisation of the Palestinian pressagency WAFA in the Gaza Strip and was involved in re-engineering printing services for the office of the primeminister of Albania. He was district manager at Generaland later at General Electric (GE Capital) before enteringpublishing. From March 2011 until being appointedmanaging director he was Director General of AGI. He set up anumber of ventures including an internationalisation projectthat helped the agency become Italy's main voice in the worldof international information. . .