That hasn’t always been positive: Between 2019 and 2022, Del Vecchio and Caltagirone gradually bought more shares in Mediobanca and criticized what they perceived as the bank’s reliance on its 13% stake in Generali—Italy’s largest insurer, where Mediobanca, Delfin and Caltagirone all hold large stakes—for profits. Last year the two moguls mounted an activist shareholder campaign, opposing Mediobanca’s proposal to reappoint Generali’s CEO.
Still, their influence is limited. More than two-thirds of Mediobanca's shareholders are retail and institutional investors: 16% hail from the U.S., a new area of focus for the bank, where it recently concluded a roadshow in late February. In 2021, it launched a “After World War II there was a clear need to stimulate post-war reconstruction and favor the evolution of an Italian industrial system by linking it to financial markets,” said Nagel in a statement to.
That began to change when Cuccia stepped down as CEO in 1982 and in 1988, when Mediobanca—which was previously majority-owned by the Italian state—was privatized, in a deal that saw three of Italy's national banks reduce their collective stake to 25%. In the 1990s, Mediobanca helped privatize several of Italy's largest state-owned companies, including telecoms firm Telecom Italia and energy distributor Enel.Cuccia’s death in 2000.