Berlusconi between Agnelli, Cuccia and Geronzi. Paolo Bricco’s analysis (Sole 24 ore)
History and profile of the entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi analyzed by Paolo Bricco, journalist and essayist
Visionary entrepreneur. Breaking politician. First populist. Genius. There are many adjectives and definitions that have been associated with Silvio Berlusconi. Each of which tells only a piece of the eclectic, complex and controversial man who was the patron of Mediaset, Mondadori, Forza Italia and the most beautiful and successful Milan in history.
Let's try to tell and analyze the figure of the entrepreneur who died at the age of 87 with Paolo Bricco , journalist of Il Sole 24 ore , analyst and essayist.
You wrote: Berlusconi is one of the paradigms of the Italian entrepreneur of the last century. Why? In what sense?
The Italian economy, especially in the second half of the 20th century, has a good innovative capacity, which has been lacking in the last 20 years. It does two typically Italian things. The first is to take a traditional sector such as construction and introduce an innovative mechanism: satellite cities for the good bourgeoisie. A model that was born, especially from a theoretical point of view, in Northern Europe and is then applied not in many cases in Europe, and in Italy it is brought for the first time by Berlusconi with Milano 2. The idea is to get out of the chaos of urban agglomerations and on the other hand to provide a superior quality urban architecture. For Silvio Berlusconi, this thing succeeds with Milano due in Segrate (MI). And this paradigmatic idea of taking the traditional building sector, which in Italy has never had an innovative drive, is an obsolete, very retro sector, fueled by state subsidies, and do something that radically changes it. This is the first aspect: innovation in a traditional sector.
The second aspect?
The second aspect is to found a new sector. With his televisions he manages to get out of the microscopic dimension of the local televisions that had been created in large quantities in the second half of the 70s, and to build a model of national television which is the application in Italy of a model, commercial TV, which arrives directly from the United States and which spreads in Italy at the same time as it spreads throughout Europe. In the Italian case it represents a new sector because it proposes an organizational model, a model of relationship with the public, a type of television product which is antagonistic to Rai and is in some way destructive of that model. So much so that then a kind of competition in television with Rai arises and, from a cultural point of view, commercial TV wins because it forces public television to look like it. This second element is paradigmatic. Naturally Silvio Berlusconi didn't discover penicillin, he spread it all over the world. But in a country like Italy that was tied to a completely different public television, it introduces a brand new model that changes the rules of the game.
You also wrote that Berlusconi's corporate culture is the first in Italy that is not ashamed of the acquired material well-being and therefore shows it, as beautiful women show. Does it mean that in general the capitalists, the entrepreneurs in Italy try to be, to appear sober because they are ashamed?
It is not a discourse that refers to today, it is a discourse that refers to the historical time in which that thing happened, the '70s and '80s, in which there is a double cultural hegemony: left-wing Catholicism and the Communist Party an Italian Berlinguerian who made the moral question a cornerstone of his thought and action. Berlusconi is proposing an antithetical business model on the market, which exhibits objects and women's bodies. Today they seem extraordinarily sexist to us, at the time they were a hedonistic liberation which, however, did not come from the left, to use old categories, but came from the right, therefore from American consumerism. All filtered by the fact that, in Berlusconi's case, business was show business, it was television. He builds this culture, and the people who build that culture day after day practice the same kinds of values and behaviors. Thus the managerial group that formed around Silvio Berlusconi adheres to the corporate culture of Fininvest and that of Publitalia, both extremely competitive. There is no limit to confidentiality, there is the ostentation of oneself, of boats, of Ferraris, of women, of fiancées, of friends, of lovers, it's all part of show business. The executives of Fininvest and Publitalia were anthropologically very different from the executives of Montedison, or Fiat, Mediobanca, Olivetti or the top executive of IRI. They were completely different things.
Silvio Berlusconi boasted throughout his career that he had never been part of the establishment, neither at the beginning nor in the continuation of his career. What today we could call underdog. Is that so?
Yes, but partially. The Italian establishment is substantially founded on two large groups: the Fiat Agnelli and Mediobanca group, between Turin and Milan, and then the establishment of the large public companies, is substantially founded on the technocratic management of IRI of Catholic extraction. Silvio Berlusconi, who works in the North, is countered by the Fiat establishment of Agnelli and Mediobanca. He was absolutely and is considered a homo novus because on the one hand it is objectively true that he started from scratch, on the other, in the 1980s, thanks to the enormous cash generating capacity of Fininvest and Publitalia he managed to never need the banks. And so what happened? It happened that he always managed to develop his projects and resorting to bank credit, but without becoming a pawn in the hands of Enrico Cuccia's Mediobanca or Banca Commerciale or Intesa San Paolo. So he wasn't part of the establishment, on the other hand he himself became the establishment.
When did it become establishment?
When he financed the network of financial advisors and asset management collection of another entrepreneur who came from nowhere, Ennio Doris who founded Mediolanum and of which Silvio Berlusconi was a part from the beginning with about 30% of the capital. Here, Banca Mediolanum is an extraordinary success with which, in parallel with all the other entrepreneurial activities, it manages to build a large financial lung and in the end a situation is created in which Silvio Berlusconi becomes an establishment. And he no longer needs the old establishment which, moreover, is starting to age, is going into crisis, the Agnellis are starting to lose momentum, they no longer have a grip on the car industry. At that point Silvio Berlusconi from a person extraneous to the establishment, becomes an establishment himself.
How were the relations between Berlusconi and the Agnelli-Mediobanca system. Is it true that Agnelli was happy with Berlusconi's entry into the field?
I would say no. Agnelli had a cynical attitude towards that operation. There was a famous phrase attributed to Agnelli according to which if Silvio Berlusconi took the field and won, all the entrepreneurs would win, while if he lost he would lose alone. Certainly the world in which the Agnellis move is a completely different world, it is the world of the first Republic. The second Republic that is generated with the Tangentopoli crisis, the end of the large state subsidiaries, the violent conflict between the judiciary and the political class of the first Republic, generates a political framework based on Berlusconi and the bipolar system in which the Agnellis find it much more difficult to move. The Agnelli family gave two important historical exponents of the first Republic, there is Umberto Agnelli who served in the Christian Democrats, and Gianni Agnelli's sister, Susanna Agnelli, was also a minister in the Republican Party. It was a very close and very strong relationship with politics, also by virtue of the fact that the Agnellis began their decline during the reshaping of the second Republic.
Oscar Giannino wrote in the Foglio that in the early 1990s Berlusconi and Cuccia met but could not find an understanding when the Berlusconi group had financial problems: Mediobanca asked that Berlusconi effectively withdraw from the management of the group but Berlusconi said no. It is true?
Yes, absolutely, Silvio Berlusconi at that moment had big financial problems linked to the fact that there had been speculation on Soros' lira, Italy had had to leave the EMS, there had been the maneuver by the Amato government which had made a forced levy on Italian accounts, there had been a very strong credit crunch. In that situation, Fininvest takes the books to Mediobanca and there they offer him the classic cure: we give you the money but we choose the management. Silvio Berlusconi, as Oscar Giannino reminds us, says no and manages to find a way out with a listing on the stock exchange. This is done not through the technical offices of the Milanese banks, therefore Mediobanca, but through those of Cesare Geronzi's Banco di Roma. And there a very strong human relationship is built between Silvio Berlusconi and Cesare Geronzi which will allow the latter to continue an already good career and make it excellent in the 90s.
How come there is no trace in Berlusconi's legacy of cultural initiatives and undertakings of a liberal and liberal imprint that he too professed? No paper or web newspaper owned by him, no cultural magazine (Ideazione lived for a very few years), no study center and not even the much heralded and promised liberal university. How come?
From a cultural and political point of view, liberalism has never existed in Italy, the Italian economy has always been public, regulated and with large companies that have always benefited from the relationship with the regulator. The same happened to Berlusconi. In the 1980s the development of the Fininvest company, television and advertising sales, took place with the construction of the company, not with the construction of pro-competitive market conditions, and from this point of view the relationship with the regulator is fundamental i.e. with politics. It is no coincidence that when a part of the judiciary tries to block national broadcasts over the air, the situation is unblocked by the socialist party and then, ex post, the structuring of a highly regulated market is built. In my opinion, we need to be extremely rational and precise in defining what the market is, what competition is, and what business is. He was a business entrepreneur rather than a market one and therefore, also from a cultural point of view, he was a right-wing moderate and not a strong supporter of competition and freedom of enterprise. That is, yes, freedom of enterprise, but the accent is placed on the word enterprise. And this is different from a competitive market with low market entry costs, speed of market exit, low subsidies, minimal regulation. He is an Italian entrepreneur, he is the fruit of Italian history. Italian history has little to do with the history of open markets and competition.
Would it have been possible to have a figure like Berlusconi, an entrepreneur, politician and man capable of having such a profound effect on Italian culture, in a historical period different from the one in which he lived?
No, because in my opinion he represents the spirit of that Italy very well, he really has the characteristics of the entrepreneur who was born in a moment of crazy energy, in a moment in which there is a trend concentrated on typical businesses such as that of building. To this we add that it will accompany the modernization of customs in the 80s with television and reaches up to the definitive transformation of business into show business which is accomplished with football then. From this point of view he is exactly the son of the spirit of his time. However, I add a detail that should be highlighted. The whole issue of money with which Berlusconi started has often been dealt with above all from a judicial point of view, there is also a broader historical-cultural point of view. Italy in the 60s and 70s was an extraordinary country in economic expansion where entire parts of the North got rich by creating huge financial lungs of black people. And that money entered and left the system through companies, through activities in Switzerland, even small banks in Milan and the Canton of Ticino. Here this is extremely significant and he is truly the mirror of a country. He represents, in positive and negative things, the spirit of those times.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/berlusconi-tra-agnelli-cuccia-e-geronzi-lanalisi-di-paolo-bricco-sole-24-ore/ on Thu, 15 Jun 2023 14:16:35 +0000.