One of the richest and most powerful persons in the world, Silvio Berlusconi was born on the 29th of September 1936 in Milan, Italy as the first child of Luigi, a bank employee and Rosa Bossi, a housewife. He was the first of three children, having a sister, Maria Francesca Antonietta, and brother, Paolo.
He went to study at a Salesian college and then studied law at the Universita Statale of Milan graduating with honors in 1961. He played the double bass while in college and created a group with Fedele Confalonieri, who is now a chairman at Mediaset. They even performed on cruise ships and Berlusconi is the one who wrote the AC Milan anthem with the help of the music producer and pop singer Tony Renis, among other pieces.
He got married to Carla Elvira Dall’Oglio in 1965 and they had their first child a year later, Maria Elvira, with another son, Pier Silvio, being born in 1969. At this time Berlusconi was starting his business career in real estate with the construction of Milano Due as his largest project to date. It consisted of a residential apartment complex with 4,000 units to the east side of the city which he sold out in the early 1970s and used the profits to invest in Telemilano, his first media venture.
He formed Fininvest in 1978, a media holding company and in 1980 he created the first private network in Italy capable of competing with the state-owned one, RAI, which held the monopoly at the time. At this time he was in a relationship with the actress Veronica Lario with whom he later on had three children, and this led to a divorce from Dall’Oglio in 1985, marrying Lario in 1990. 1978 was the year when he also joined the Propaganda Due Masonic lodge.
By 1983, after only five years of owning Fininvest he earned around 58.3 million Euros and the funding sources cannot be identified due to the complex system of holding companies. It led to the only Italian commercial TV group.
He expanded the network by buying the channels Italia 1 and Rete 4 in October 1984 and he won the right for national transmission, although restricted (no news or political commentary). Bettino Craxi, a political ally of Berlusconi was instrumental in this victory, being a former prime minister and the leader of the Italian Socialist Party. He was one of his best men at the wedding between Silvio and Veronica Lario.
Only in 1990 could the channels fully transmit news and political commentary once the Mammi law passed, so he began to diversify the portfolio of Fininvest until that time, with interests in insurance, publishing, medical technology and banking. He bought the AC Milan team in 1986 which was at the time on the brink of bankruptcy.
A part of his media holdings were sold to the Kirch Group from Germany in 1995 and four years later a partnership was established with them called the Epsilon MediaGroup.
He became involved in politics and was elected the head of the Forza Italia conservative party, being elected prime minister in 1994, a position he held until 2011 (three terms), when a sex scandal led to him being sentenced to six years and a lifetime ban from politics. This was also the period when the European debt crisis was taking place and the next year he took the leadership of the Il Popolo della Liberta party afterwards which was center-right in orientation.
The People of Freedom announced their support for the government of Enrico Letta but in June 2013 Berlusconi oriented his forces toward the restoration of his first party Forza Italia which was launched officially on 16 November and under his leadership the party announced that it would be at the opposition of the Grand coalition government of Enrico Letta. The newly formed party began with dissent between its members and some of them left to create a new party called New Centre-Right.
Veronica Lario announced that she filed for divorce in May 2009 and three years later Berlusconi was ordered to pay his ex-wife $48 million a year in the settlement, leaving him the children and the $100 million house.
Berlusconi was involved in a lot of controversies, being accused of having mafia ties at the early steps of his career and being convicted or on trial for a lot of legal problems such as abuse of office, defamation, extortion, perjury, false accounting, embezzlement, money laundering, tax fraud, witness tampering, corruption, child sexual abuse and bribery. Most of the cases have been politically altered to “no conviction”, although some of them ended up in sentences and others are still ongoing.
He made controversial comments as the prime minister of Italy in 2001 which were considered derogatory toward the Muslims. The comment was “we must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and – in contrast with Islamic countries – respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tolerance.”, words for which he later apologized.
The concept of “Berlusconismo” appeared during the 1980s and it signified entrepreneurial optimism, but over the years, although the term remained, its meaning changed referring to the laissez-faire vision favored by Berlusconi not just in the economical affairs, but also in social and political ones, with the demagogic populism that some even compared to the Fascism. The supporters though, prefer to compare the concept to the French Gaullism or the Peronism of Argentina.
His fortune is now estimated at $7.9 billion according to Forbes and most of it comes from his stake in Fininvest. The entity has stakes in Mediaset, the Mondadori publishing house, the Mediolanum insurance firm, the Molecular Medicine biotechnology company, and 2% of the Mediobanka bank as well as the Aedes real estate company. The revenues of Fininvest amassed to 4.7 billion Euros in 2013.
Berlusconi has other assets as well such as the Teatro Manzoni in Milan, Alba Servizi Aerotransporti and the Fininvest Gestione Servizi which is a fund-management company. Another important investment is in A.C. Milan which had revenues of 279 million Euros in 2013.
