Marco Tronchetti Provera, the thousand lives of the “dominus” of Pirelli
Marco Tronchetti Provera is an envied and enviable man. He was born wealthy, became filthy rich, skilled in business, loved by women, inserted in the good salons. Now, having turned three quarters of a century, the time has come to sing De Profundis for him? The Gottederdammerung has arrived, as Richard Wagner teaches, the twilight of the gods? Or will the manager be able to reinvent himself once again, the third reincarnation that makes the phoenix an amateur? Reading the list of his present or past assignments is to pale. Executive Chairman until December 2013 of Camfin SpA; executive vice president and CEO of Pirelli; former vice-president of Mediobanca; member of the International Advisory Board of Allianz; member of the executive committee of Aspen Institute, of the executive council of Assolombarda, Confindustria and Assonime. And the list is still very long.
The story of Marco Tronchetti Provera is not exactly that of the classic self-made man, left with cardboard suitcases and became rich abroad. MTP, as friends and foes call him is a man born wealthy. His father Silvio was in charge of Falck’s purchasing department. “He was a business man with an international figure – said Tronchetti Provera in an interview with Il Sole last year -: as a manager, he had represented the Italian steel companies when Europe was remodeled around the Czech Republic, the European Economic Community of coal and steel”.
So certainly not a son of the people, nothing to do with the Lumpenproletariat (“ragged proletariat”) of which Karl Marx spoke in his works. But a man with a sharp wit (and a declared Inter faith, as evidenced by the long friendship with Massimo Moratti) who knew how to take advantage of the opportunities that came his way. A graduate of Bocconi in 1971, Tronchetti Provera went to London to learn the trade. In the land of Albione he worked at the transport and logistics company P & O, then he returned to Italy and founded SogeMar Spa, a company operating in the field of logistics.
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