Ali Reza Arabnia

The eldest of five children, Ali Reza Arabnia was born in Tehran in 1955 into a family of building contractors with an entrepreneurial tradition and culture stretching back over 100 years.
His career at Geico, a company within the Gecofin Group and of which he is now Chairman, began in the 1980s; until the early 1990s he was at the helm of various companies and in 1994, through a management buy-out, he acquired Gecofin together with his wife Laura.
In 2005, it acquired Geico from Comau-Fiat and, in just five years, managed to turn the company around following a period of crisis, establishing it as one of the world leaders in the automotive plant engineering industry. In 2011, it entered into a partnership with Taikisha, further cementing Geico’s leadership position.
Always focused on innovation, in 2009 he opened the Pardis Innovation Centre, now considered the most cutting-edge technology hub in the field of automotive painting. A staunch advocate of people’s value and well-being, he has dedicated an internal space of over 2,000 square metres, Laura’s Garden of Thoughts, to fostering a positive workplace environment for his employees, and has established an in-house training centre, the Pippo Neri Campus, in honour of his father-in-law, the company’s founder. Arabnia is imbued with the concept of social responsibility and the role of the entrepreneur in the community: hence his involvement in philanthropic activities and the creation of the Pardis Foundation. He is a member of various boards of directors of industrial, academic and charitable organisations, and in 2014 he was appointed Cavaliere del Lavoro.