New Iberia chairman takes BA merger hotseat

MADRID (Reuters) - The dealmaking skills of Iberia's

new executive chairman Antonio Vazquez could prove a prize asset for the Spanish airline as it looks to revive stalled merger talks with British Airways.

Vazquez, a 57 year-old from the historic southern city of Cordoba, stepped in to replace Fernando Conte on Thursday. News of Conte's departure coincided with a media report which was denied by the airline of shareholder pressure on Iberia to step up the pace of merger talks.

Conte had planned to quit before he turned 60 next March.

"Despite the fact that Conte initiated these negotiations and was not an impediment to the merger, I think this will help quicken the pace of a deal," Josep Francesc Valls, an aviation industry expert at Barcelona's ESADE business school said.

Vazquez made a reputation as a canny dealmaker at the helm of tobacco firm Altadis, having worked his way up over 15 years.

An excellent English speaker with slicked back hair and a good name in international financial circles, he managed to draw healthy interest in Altadis in 2007.

A bidding war took the price of Altadis gradually higher to end up in the hands of another British firm, Imperial Tobacco,, which finally met the cigarette-maker's asking price of 12.6 billion euros ($17.54 billion) in cash.

Vazquez, an early riser with a passion for running, and historical novels, was a board member at Iberia between 2005 and 2007 representing an Altadis unit, Logista.

"He has a great gift for communicating and an obsession with doing things right. He will bring excitement and passion to the job," said one former colleague from Vazquez's time at Altadis, who asked not to be named.

"Antonio is very accessible; he used to go to the factories and have a coffee with the workers and his door is always open."

Since 2008 Vazquez, an economics graduate, has been a director at Telefonica's International unit, hired by the telecoms giant's chairman, Cesar Alierta, under whom Vazquez had worked previously at Altadis.

Vazquez, known as a savvy strategist, still shares his love of cigars with Alierta.

For a story on Iberia's change of chairman, please click on

($1=.7184 euros)

(Reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary and Tomas Gonzalez; editing by John Stonestreet)