Billionaires Battling Bankers Is Not a Good Look for Draghi
Italy’s richest man wants to remake the country’s biggest insurers. It’s a high-stakes contest for a systemically important institution in Europe.
The eyes have it?
Photographer: AFP Contributor/AFPItalian Prime Minister Mario Draghi wants to make his country more friendly to outside investors. But an ongoing power struggle involving its largest insurer, its richest man and its most powerful investment banker is not a good look.
Leonardo Del Vecchio’s fortune of nearly 40 billion euros ($45.1 billion) is rooted in his eyewear group Luxottica Group SpA, which he merged with French lensmaker Essilor in 2018. The 86-year-old has now turned his steely gaze to Italian finance and does not like what he sees at Italy’s largest insurer — Assicurazioni Generali SpA, a core institution of European finance and one of the biggest buyers of Italy’s sovereign debt.
Italy’s top-ranked billionaire has taken particular umbrage at Generali’s French chief executive officer, Philippe Donnet. Del Vecchio is joined in his frustration by Francesco Caltagirone, a 78-year-old Roman construction magnate who owns the newspaper Il Messaggero. Caltagirone’s fortune is worth just about a tenth of Del Vecchio’s but the pair, together with a banking foundation in Turin, have amassed a stake of around 15% in Generali.