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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | Finanziaria d'Investimenti, Srl (1978) |
| Headquarters | Milan, Italy |
| Key people | Marina Berlusconi, Chairman Pasquale Cannatelli, CEO |
| Industry | Financial holding |
| Revenue | ▲ € 6,196 Billion (2005) |
| Operating income | ▲ € 2,871 Billion (2005) |
| Net income | ▲ € 1,297 Billion (2005) |
| Employees | 19,755 |
| Website | www.fininvest.com |
Fininvest is a financial holding company controlled by Silvio Berlusconi's family and managed by Silvio Berlusconi's oldest daughter Marina Berlusconi.
In October 2009 the company was ordered to pay € 750 million in damages to a rival media company for the bribery of a judge who decided in favour of Fininvest during a long-running takeover battle.
Structure
The Fininvest Group is composed by many important companies, e.g. Mediolanum (an insurance and banking company), Medusa (a major Italian film production company), Mondadori (one of Italy's most important publishing companies), A.C. Milan (a football team) and Mediaset, which is, at present, the biggest private entertainment competitor in Italy, owning three channels (Canale 5, Italia 1, Rete 4),one channel in Spain and owner of Endemol, a digital TV broadcasting network and many other companies related to TV broadcasting.
The Berlusconi family doesn't control the company directly. Instead, its shares are owned by 38 separate companies, all named "Holding Italiana" followed by a number (1-38), which are in turn predominantly controlled by Berlusconi. These "Holding Italiane" have repeatedly come under investigation by the police for various financial and accounting irregularities, slush funds and money-laundering. All of them were created at the end of the 1970s by covert associates of Berlusconi's and received significant investments (several hundreds of millions of euros at today's value) from still unknown sources. A part of their liquidity was even deposited in cash. Much of the documentation of that time relative to the early financial and banking operations of these companies has been lost, in one case because of a fire.
A report on those matters was commissioned by the general Dipartimento Investigativo Anti-Mafia (Bureau of Anti-Mafia Investigation) of Palermo in the 1990s to a finance expert working at the Bank of Italy, Francesco Giuffrida, to supplement the evidence in a tentative case against Berlusconi and associates for their alleged involvement with the Sicilian Mafia. In 1998 the case was temporarily shelved, because of lack of sufficient evidence to stand trial. In 2009, the case has been re-opened.
External links
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