Silvio Scaglia

Silvio Scaglia (1958), the Italian telecoms entrepreneur, is currently Chairman and sole owner of web TV platform Babelgum. In 2007, Mr. Scaglia set up an investment firm, Pacific Capital, active both in public and private equity investment opportunities on a global scale. Scaglia was previously the majority shareholder of Italian telecommunications company Fastweb S.p.A.: on April 9th 2007 he sold his 18.75% share in the company to Swisscom, which had launched a takeover bid of the company at 47 euros per share. The Swiss TLC company eventually bought 82.1% of FastWeb for a total of 3.1 billion euros.^[1]

Forbes estimates Scaglia’s wealth at around 1.2 billion USD, making him the thirteenth richest man in Italy (the last in the list of Italian billionaires) and the 799th richest man in the world.

Biography

In 2005 Scaglia founded Babelgum, a web-tv platform that is based on P2P technology. He set up the venture without carrying out market research, saying "this is built on gut feeling...and is a natural extension of my Fastweb experience." Scaglia has so far invested 50 million euros in Babelgum, and expects the venture to break even by the end of the decade. ^[2] The platform is free for its users and operates a revenue sharing system. Scaglia is prepared to invest a further €35-60 million of his own money in the company per annum in the coming years. ^[3]

Scaglia has been described as "as close as Italy gets to a full-fledged multicompany Internet entrepreneur" due to his talent for successful start-ups ^[4] ;and a "technology maverick", credited with providing the "drive" to boost Italy's fibre optic networks and indeed lead the Italian fibre optic network market, accordng to a 2003 article on Time.com. ^[5]

Prior to creating Babelgum, Scaglia founded FASTWEB in September 1999; he has said "[I] invested all my money - to the last penny - and all my credibility" in Fastweb. ^[6] The company invested approximately Euro 4 billion in creating "the first fully IP optical-based access and backbone network in the world". The company was one of the first in the world to create a large-scale "triple-play" integrated IP network, for fixed telephony, high-speed internet and TV. It is also Italy's second-largest fixed-line phone operator after Telecom Italia. ^[7]

Prior to founding FASTWEB, Scaglia was CEO of Omnitel, which later became Vodafone Italia. Vodafone is the second largest wireless telecommunications company in Italy. ^[8] According to an article in Italian newspaper Il Foglio, Scaglia's nickname at the company was Il Mago or "The Magician", because he managed to swell subscriber numbers from 300,000 to 8 million over a short period. ^[9]

After graduating in Telecommunications Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin, Scaglia embarked on his professional career at McKinsey e Bain & Co., where he was a consultant.

References

1. ^ Clover, Julian (May 162007). "Swisscom secures Fastweb". broadbandtvnews.com. http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/?p=1017. 
2. ^ Blakely, Rhys (March 022007). "Multimillion backing for the latest bright idea in online video". The Times. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article1459042.ece. 
3. ^ http://www.babelgum.com/html/about_us.php
4. ^ Sylvers, Eric (March 042007). "Fastweb Founder turns his attention to Internet television and video-on-demand". International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/04/business/nettv05.php. 
5. ^ Halper, Mark (July 212003). "E.Biscom: Silvio Scaglia/Milan". Time.com. http://www.time.com/time/globalbusiness/article/0,9171,1101030728-466022,00.html. 
6. ^ "Battle of the Billionaires". Red Herring. 2007-3-26. pp. 25. 
7. ^ "Babelgum's Contrarian Approach to Web TV". Business Week. September 042007. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2007/gb2007094_157643.htm?chan=search. Retrieved on 2007-09-04. 
8. ^ Babelgum - Silvio Scaglia
9. ^ "L'internazionale Colao sale in cima all'antenna della Vodafone". Il Foglio. 2008-5-28. pp. 3.