Carlo De Benedetti

Last updated

Carlo De Benedetti
Carlo De Benedetti - Trento.JPG
Carlo De Benedetti at the Festival dell'Economia di Trento, 31 May 2012
Born (1934-11-14) 14 November 1934 (age 89)
Turin, Italy
Occupation(s)Industrialist. Ex-CEO of FIAT, Olivetti, CIR Group. Ex-deputy chairman of Banco Ambrosiano and ex president of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso.
Height1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)

Carlo De Benedetti (born 14 November 1934) [1] is an Italian industrialist, engineer, and publisher. He is both an Italian and naturalized Swiss citizen. [2] [3] He was awarded the Order of Merit for Labour by the Italian state in 1983, [4] the Medaglia d'oro ai benemeriti della cultura e dell'arte (gold medal of culture and art) [5] and the Legion d'Honneur in 1987. [6]

Contents

De Benedetti is chairman of the Rodolfo De Benedetti Foundation (Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti) in Milan, which he founded in 1998 in memory of his father. It promotes research into economic policy decisions regarding the labor market and welfare systems in Europe. [7] [8] In 2020, De Benedetti spent 10 million euros setting up Domani, a new liberal newspaper headquartered in Rome. [9] He is married to the former actress Silvia Monti.

Life and career

Born into a wealthy Jewish family, on 14 November 1934, Carlo De Benedetti is the brother of Italian Senator Franco Debenedetti, whose surname is different owing to a spelling error. [10] In 1943, during the World War II, the De Benedetti family fled to Switzerland. [3] After Carlo returned to Italy, he received a degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin [1] and in 1959 began to work in his father's manufacturing business, the Compagnia Italiana Tubi Metallici Flessibili. He helped improve company profits consistently and in 1972 acquired the Gilardini company, of which he became president and CEO until 1976. [1]
Carlo De Benedetti left Italy to return to Switzerland in 1975, owing to possible terrorist threats during the Anni di Piombo period of Italian domestic terrorism. [3] [11]

For a brief period, from 4 May to 25 August 1976, he was appointed CEO of FIAT. [12] His resignation from Fiat was caused, according to De Benedetti, by his decision to lay off 65,000 workers, which was refused by Fiat head Gianni Agnelli; [12] other sources say that he was suspected of trying to build up a takeover of power within the company, with the backing Swiss financial groups. [13]

In November 1976, De Benedetti acquired the CIR Group, [1] thereby also obtaining control of the national newspaper La Repubblica and the newsmagazine L'Espresso . In 1978 he became CEO of the Italian manufacturer Olivetti, [1] [14] where he remained until his resignation in 1996. [14] As president of Olivetti, since 1983, [1] he quickly and ruthlessly reorganized the company, switching its focus from mechanical typewriters to computers. [11]

In the 1980s, along with other leading business figures, he founded the European Round Table of Industrialists, of which he was vice president until 2004. In 1985 he became a member of the European Advisory Committee of the New York Stock Exchange. [6]

In 1995 De Benedetti founded the telecommunications companies Omnitel and Infostrada. [6]

In 1997 he created the Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (L'Espresso Editorial Group), [15] by merging the L'Espresso and La Repubblica editorial groups. Carlo Caracciolo was appointed president of the group. However, Carlo De Benedetti assumed the presidency in 2006, after the death of Caracciolo. [16] On 26 January 2009, at a press conference, De Benedetti announced his decision to retire from all his executive positions in the CIR group, keeping only - at the request of the Board of Directors - the position of Chairman of the Espresso Group. All the executive positions in the CIR group were given to the current Chief Executive, Rodolfo De Benedetti. [17]

SME affair

In 1985, Romano Prodi, then president of the state-owned IRI (Institute for Industrial Reconstruction), tried to sell the IRI share in SME (a former state-owned agency, later turned food industry conglomerate) to De Benedetti, who was then president of Buitoni (a food industry belonging to the CIR group), for Lit.497 billion. [18] [19] Other offers for SME included most notably one for a joint venture with Fininvest, a media group owned by entrepreneur and future Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The sale to De Benedetti was later blocked by the then Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi, [18] and SME remained state-owned until almost 10 years later.

De Benedetti brought IRI to court in an attempt to appeal the block, but the court, presided over by judge Filippo Verde, denied his case in 1986. [20] In 1995, Silvio Berlusconi, Cesare Previti and Attilio Pacifico were accused of having bribed Filippo Verde and Renato Squillante to fix the trial against De Benedetti. [21] Berlusconi was later acquitted.

According to Der Spiegel on 7 June 2011, Berlusconi was found guilty of bribery and ordered to pay €560 million to CIR.

Tangentopoli

In 1993, during the Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) political-corruption investigations, Carlo De Benedetti was arrested and admitted to having paid a Lit.10 billion bribe to government parties, to obtain a purchase order from the Italian Postal Service for obsolete teleprinters and computers. In May of that year, he was officially put under investigation, but De Benedetti never went to trial for this episode, the statute of limitations having expired. [22] [23]

Banco Ambrosiano

De Benedetti became deputy chairman of the Italian bank Banco Ambrosiano in 1981, by acquiring 2% of the capital, but left after only 61 days. [6] [24] In April 1992, Carlo De Benedetti and 32 other people were convicted of fraud by a Milan court in connection with the collapse of the bank. [25] Benedetti was sentenced to six years and four months in prison, [25] but the sentence was overturned in April 1998, by the Court of Cassation. [26]

Media businesses

De Benedetti once controlled the La Repubblica, Italy's main left-leaning newspaper; L'Espresso, a major news magazine; and La Stampa , a newspaper published out of Turin. In 2012, he handed control of his family media company to his sons, who later sold it to the Agnelli-Elkann family against his wishes. In 2020, he founded Domani, a daily newspaper, to service liberal readers. [9] [27] The newspaper's ownership will eventually be transferred to a non-profit foundation. [27]

Politics

Carlo De Benedetti has often been identified with Italian centre left politics. [28] He has a long-standing feud with Silvio Berlusconi, and he once controlled the main centre-left-leaning Italian newspaper ( La Repubblica ) and newsmagazine ( L'Espresso ). He has been called a "foe of Berlusconi" by The Wall Street Journal . [17]

In October 2005, De Benedetti reportedly offered Benjamin Netanyahu, then the Finance Minister of Israel, the position of Italian finance minister, which Netanyahu declined. [29] De Benedetti later said it had been a joke. Ehud Gol, the Israeli ambassador to Italy, had introduced the men. [30]

Honours

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silvio Berlusconi</span> Italian politician and media tycoon (1936–2023)

Silvio Berlusconi was an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 2013; a member of the Senate of the Republic from 2022 until his death in 2023, and previously from March to November 2013; and a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 to 2022, and previously from 1999 to 2001. With a net worth of US$6.8 billion as of June 2023, Berlusconi was the third-wealthiest person in Italy at the time of his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roberto Formigoni</span> Italian politician (born 1947)

Roberto Formigoni is an Italian politician. He was the president of Lombardy from 1995 to 2013. He is the former unofficial political spokesperson of the Communion and Liberation movement. On 21 February 2019, the Supreme Court of Cassation, the highest court in Italy, found him guilty of corruption and sentenced him to a definitive jail term of 5 years and 10 months. As a result, he has been detained in the prison of Bollate, near Milan, Italy, since February 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gianni Agnelli</span> Italian businessman (1921–2003)

Giovanni "Gianni" Agnelli, nicknamed L'Avvocato, was an Italian industrialist and principal shareholder of Fiat. As the head of Fiat, he controlled 4.4% of Italy's GDP, 3.1% of its industrial workforce, and 16.5% of its industrial investment in research. He was the richest man in modern Italian history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Elkann</span> Italian-American businessman

John Philip Jacob Elkann is an Italian industrialist. In 1997, he became the chosen heir of his maternal grandfather Gianni Agnelli, following the death of Gianni's nephew Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, and since 2004 has been leading the Agnelli family, an Italian multi-industry business dynasty. The family has been compared to the US political family of the Kennedys.

<i>la Repubblica</i> Italian daily newspaper

la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper with an average circulation of 151,309 copies in May 2023. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo, and Arnoldo Mondadori Editore as a leftist newspaper, which proclaimed itself a "newspaper-party". During the early years of la Repubblica, its political views and readership ranged from the reformist left to the extraparliamentary left. Into the 21st century, it is identified with centre-left politics, and was known for its anti-Berlusconism, and Silvio Berlusconi's personal scorn for the paper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arnoldo Mondadori Editore</span> Italian publishing company

Arnoldo Mondadori Editore is the biggest publishing company in Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giorgio Napolitano</span> President of Italy from 2006 to 2015

Giorgio Napolitano was an Italian politician who served as the president of Italy from 2006 to 2015, the first to be re-elected to the office. In office for 8 years and 244 days, he was the longest-serving president, until the record was surpassed by Sergio Mattarella in 2023. He also was the longest-lived president in the history of the Italian Republic, which has been in existence since 1946. Although he was a prominent figure of the First Italian Republic, he did not take part in the Constituent Assembly of Italy that drafted the Italian constitution; he is considered one of the symbols of the Second Italian Republic, which came about after the Tangentopoli scandal of the 1990s. Due to his dominant position in Italian politics, some critics have sometimes referred to him as Re Giorgio.

<i>LEspresso</i> Weekly Italian magazine

L'Espresso is an Italian progressive weekly news magazine. It is one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies; the other is the conservative magazine Panorama. Since 2022, it has been published by BFC Media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CIR Group</span> Italian holding company

CIR Group is an Italian holding company listed on the stock exchange which is 46% controlled by COFIDE of the De Benedetti family. The company was founded in 1976, when Carlo De Benedetti acquired the company Concerie Italiane Riunite, a Turin based tanning company, from its historic owner the Bocca family and transformed it into an industrial holding company. The company was then renamed Compagnie Industriali Riunite. Chief Executive of CIR for almost twenty years, Rodolfo De Benedetti is now Executive Chairman of the company. Monica Mondardini is Chief Executive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renato Schifani</span> Italian politician (born 1950)

Renato Maria Giuseppe Schifani is an Italian politician who has served as the President of Sicily since 13 October 2022. Born in Palermo, Schifani was a prominent member of the now-defunct centre-right People of Freedom (PdL) and served in the Italian Senate from 1996 to 2022. He then joined the New Centre-Right (NCD) party in 2013 but left it in 2016 for Forza Italia (FI), the PdL's successor. From 29 April 2008 to 14 March 2013, he was President of the Senate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GEDI Gruppo Editoriale</span> Italian media conglomerate

GEDI Gruppo Editoriale S.p.A., formerly known as Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso S.p.A., is an Italian media conglomerate. Founded in 1955, it is based in Turin, Italy.

DonCarlo Caracciolo, 9th Prince of Castagneto, 4th Duke of Melito, was an Italian publisher. He created Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, one of Italy's leading publishing groups, which included Italy's newspaper of record, La Repubblica. He was known as "the editor prince", a reference to his aristocratic birth and elegant manner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruno Vespa</span> Italian television and newspaper journalist

Bruno Paolo Vespa is an Italian television and newspaper journalist. A former director of the Italian state-owned TV channel Rai 1's news programme TG1, Vespa is the founding host of the programme Porta a Porta, which has been broadcast without interruption on RAI channels since 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giorgio Stracquadanio</span> Italian politician

Giorgio Clelio Stracquadanio was an Italian politician and journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenio Scalfari</span> Italian journalist (1924–2022)

Eugenio Scalfari was an Italian journalist. He was editor-in-chief of L'Espresso (1963–1968), a member of Parliament in Italy's Chamber of Deputies (1968–1972), and co-founder of La Repubblica and its editor-in-chief (1976–1996). He was known for his meetings and interviews with important figures, including Pope Francis, Enrico Berlinguer, Aldo Moro, Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, and Roberto Benigni.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corrado Passera</span> Italian manager and banker

Corrado Passera is an Italian manager and banker, who has served as minister of economic development and infrastructure and transport in the Mario Monti Cabinet. He is a member of Spencer Stuart's Industrial Chain practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodolfo De Benedetti</span>

Rodolfo De Benedetti is an Italian entrepreneur and company executive, Chairman of the CIR Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franco Tatò</span> Italian businessman (1932–2022)

Francesco Tatò was an Italian businessman. He was known as "Kaiser Franz" for the tough management methods he used to achieve economic turnarounds at the companies where he was appointed CEO. He was married to Italian writer and television author and producer Sonia Raule.

Adele Cambria was an Italian journalist, writer and actress.

Domani is an Italian newspaper published in Rome, Italy. The newspaper was launched by Carlo De Benedetti, former publisher of La Repubblica, in the spring of 2020, after the latter had been sold by his sons to the Agnelli family and, in his view, had started to betray its legacy as Italy's leading progressive newspaper.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 (in Italian)"Sfide perse e vinte: Repubblica-Mondadori", Gazzetta di Mantova, 10 March 1998, webpage: GL2.
  2. ↑ "Berlusconi attacca De Benedetti e Mauro". Il Sole 24 Ore (in Italian). 2 September 2009.
  3. 1 2 3 "De Benedetti: "Ecco perché ho la doppia cittadinanza"". La Repubblica (in Italian). 2 September 2009.
  4. ↑ (in Italian) http://www.cavalieridellavoro.it/cavaliere.php?numero_brevetto=1985
  5. ↑ (in Italian) http://www.quirinale.it/qrnw/statico/onorificenze/decorato.asp?id=6&ono=2%5B%5D
  6. 1 2 3 4 "De Benedetti: lascio tutte le presidenze". La Stampa . 26 January 2009. Archived from the original on 1 March 2009. Retrieved 3 January 2010.
  7. ↑ "Profile: Carlo De Benedetti", Festival of Economics of Trento, 2012
  8. ↑ "www.frdb.org Fondazione Rodolfo DeBenedetti - Highlights".
  9. 1 2 "Domani more than just another newspaper for Italy's De Benedetti". Reuters. 15 September 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  10. ↑ "De Benedetti indagato con il fratello Carlo". Corriere della Sera . 16 January 1997.
  11. 1 2 Tagliabue, John (19 February 1984). "Crafting A High-Tech Renaissance At Olivetti". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
  12. 1 2 "Tra industria e Borsa cinquant'anni sul ring". LaStampa.it. 27 January 2009. Archived from the original on 22 March 2012. Retrieved 23 December 2009.
  13. ↑ "De Benedetti, finanziere moralista che piace alla sinistra". ilGiornale.it. 19 August 2009.
  14. 1 2 Tagliabue, John (4 September 1996). "De Benedetti Steps Down as the Chairman of Olivetti". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
  15. ↑ "FUSIONE L' ESPRESSO - REPUBBLICA 'AVREMO PIU' RISORSE PER CRESCERE'". Archivio - la Repubblica.it.
  16. ↑ "Rainews24.it". Archived from the original on 13 June 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
  17. 1 2 "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 30 January 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  18. 1 2 "La Repubblica/politica: La vicenda Sme Dall'Iri a Berlusconi".
  19. ↑ "Lavoce.info - ARTICOLI - Vendita SME: Il prezzo era giusto?". Archived from the original on 9 October 2010. Retrieved 2 January 2009.
  20. ↑ "la Repubblica/politica: La vicenda Sme".
  21. ↑ "Corriere della Sera - Sme, storia di un processo".
  22. ↑ "PPTT poste tangenti", La Republica, 21 May 1993, web: LR21.
  23. ↑ "Quell inchiesta contesa", La Republica, 31 October 1993: LR31.
  24. ↑ "DE BENEDETTI RINVIATO A GIUDIZIO". Archivio - la Repubblica.it.
  25. 1 2 "Court Convicts Financier, 23 Others in Billion-Dollar Failure of Italian Bank," Rocky Mountain News , April 17, 1992
  26. ↑ "High court overturns conviction of Olivetti chairman in bank collapse," Associated Press, 22 April 1998.
  27. 1 2 Giuffrida, Angela (9 August 2020). "Italy's new liberal newspaper Domani promises 'facts not chatter'". The Observer. ISSN   0029-7712 . Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  28. ↑ "De Benedetti: imprenditore sfavillante e "nemico" di Berlusconi - Il Sole 24 ORE".
  29. ↑ Shimoni, Eli (15 December 2005). "Bibi: I declined ministerial job offer in Italy". Ynetnews . Retrieved 29 July 2009.
  30. ↑ Bar, Yossi (16 December 2005). "Italian tycoon: Treasury offer to Bibi was joke". Ynetnews . Retrieved 29 July 2009.
  31. ↑ Sito web del Quirinale: dettaglio decorato. Archived September 2, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  32. ↑ Sito web del Quirinale: dettaglio decorato. Archived September 2, 2014, at the Wayback Machine

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Carlo De Benedetti at Wikimedia Commons

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.