Telecom Italia chief Marco Patuano said he has never been asked to offload its Brazilian unit, TIM Participacoes, as speculation mounted that shareholder Vivendi is growing impatient and may be looking to replace him.

The comments follow a strategy meeting between Vivendi and TI in Paris last week.

“Our strategy is to invest in infrastructure as part of a broadly organic growth path” in Brazil,  Patuano told Il Sole 24 Ore in an interview. He said he “never received” a request to sell TIM Participacoes from Vivendi, which owns 23.8 percent of TI.

“Patuano is a bit of a man of the past and I’m not sure how long he can stay in the saddle, unless he aligns himself with Vivendi,” Tommaso Iaquinta of investment bank Livolsi-Iaquinta & Partners, told Reuters.

While it is believed that Vivendi wants to sell the Brazilian unit, it would need wider support to push for a deal. Brazil is strategically an important market for TI.

Commenting on the decision not to merge TIM Participaceos with Oi in a deal involving investment firm LetterOne, Patuano said “it was clear from the start there was no agreement on the respective roles in the combined entity”, and that TI would only have agreed if it was the “industrial leader” of the new company.

Patuano also said Vivendi had approved “with conviction” his plan to invest nearly €12 billion in fixed and mobile infrastructure in the period to 2018, as it looks to become a “digital telco and platform company”.

Meanwhile, at home, Telecom Italia also wants to reach an agreement with investors in fiber optic company Metroweb for the development of a broadband network in Italy, Reuters reported.