Berlusconi silvio biography

[Today, June 14, 2023 took place Berlusconi’s state funeral in Milan. Therefore, from our archives, part of an article written on July 1, 2003 and updated on July 2, 2003]

Biography of Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi was born on September 29, 1936. The son of a Milanese middle class family, his father was a bank clerk, studied law at the University of Milan, and wrote a thesis on advertising contracts. Berlusconi befriended Bettino Craxi who, in 1976, became the leader of the Socialist Party and Italy’s prime minister in 1983. Craxi helped Berlusconi build his media empire.

Silvio Berlusconi has five children from two marriages. Marina and Piersilvio, both from his first marriage, manage parts of his family empire. Berlusconi has another three younger children from his second wife, former actress Veronica Lario.

Berlusconi started his career as a businessman in the 1960s. In 1975, he began to create his media empire Fininvest which now controls Italy’s three main private TV channels. His Mediaset company owns Italia 1, Retequattro and Canale 5. Berlusconi also controls Publitalia, the leading advertising company, as well as Mondadori, Italy’s biggest publishing house. Il Giornale, a national newspaper, and many magazines are part of the empire. The world famous football club AC Milan also belongs to Berlusconi. Banking, insurance and telecommunication are a few of Berlusconi’s other business activities.

There may be a lot of fantapolitica, an Italian specialty of unfounded rumors spread in the media. Still, it remains unclear where parts of the money for building his economic empire came from.

His economic ascension was closely tied to the political career of the Socialist leader Bettino Craxi whose career ended in the widespread corruption scandal known as Tangentopoli, which involved an important part of the political, economic and legal establishment. It led t

Italian media tycoon and politician (1936–2023)

"Berlusconi" redirects here. For other uses, see Berlusconi (disambiguation).

Silvio Berlusconi (BAIR-luu-SKOH-nee; Italian:[ˈsilvjoberluˈskoːni]; 29 September 1936 – 12 June 2023) was an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in three governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 2013; a member of the Senate of the Republic from 2022 until his death in 2023, and previously from March to November 2013; and a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 to 2022, and previously from 1999 to 2001. With a net worth of US$6.8 billion in June 2023, Berlusconi was the third-wealthiest person in Italy at the time of his death.

Berlusconi rose into the financial elite of Italy in the late 1960s. He was the controlling shareholder of Mediaset and owned the Italian football club AC Milan from 1986 to 2017. He was nicknamed Il Cavaliere ('The Knight') for his Order of Merit for Labour; he voluntarily resigned from this order in March 2014. In 2018, Forbes ranked him as the 190th-richest man in the world, with a net worth of US$8 billion. In 2009, Forbes ranked him 12th in the list of the World's Most Powerful People due to his domination of Italian politics throughout more than fifteen years at the head of the centre-right coalition.

Berlusconi was prime minister for nine years in total, making him the longest serving post-war prime minister of Italy, and the third-longest-serving since Italian unification, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti. He was the leader of the centre-right party Forza Italia from 1994 to 2009, and its successor party The People of Freedom from 2009 to 2013. He led the revived Forza Italia from 2013 to 2023. B

Italian businessman and politician.

Until 2006 businessman and politician Silvio Berlusconi was the Italian prime minister and the leader of his party, Forza Italia. He is the president of AC Milan, a first-division soccer team; the owner of Elmond, parent company of the publishing house Einaudi; and the majority stockholder of the publisher A. Mondadori. According to Forbes, he was in 2005 the richest man in Italy. He began his road to fortune in the 1960s in the building sector, constructing many residences in Milan, and later entire residential and commercial complexes, becoming in the process the leading Italian figure in the industry. After the Edilnord Center, he built Milan 2, Milan 3, and the "Sunflower," all residential complexes near Milan. His entrepreneurial activity even won him the honorific Cavaliere del Lavoro (Knight of industry) in 1977. In 1974 he launched Telemilano, the cable television affiliate of Milan 2, which was soon diffused throughout all of Lombardy, and created the holding company Fininvest, of which he became president. In 1980 he founded Canale 5 (Channel 5), the first private national television network in Italy, which he followed with Italia 1 (1982) and Rete 4 (1984). His networks benefited from well-known favors (particularly the Mammì Law on television broadcasting, which aimed at regulating radio and television networks, but which allowed one "player" to own three networks) conferred by the ruling Italian Socialist Party, or PSI, which Berlusconi repaid by granting to Bettino Craxi's (1934–2000) party free interviews, bulletins, and commercials on his channels.

His entry into politics occurred in the early 1990s. At the end of 1993 Italy was wracked by the "Clean Hands" (Mani Pulite) judicial investigation launched by Judge Antonio Di Pietro (b.1950) of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Milan on 17 February 1992, which implicated nearly the entire leading class of the polit

Silvio Berlusconi (29 September 1936 – 12 June 2023) was an Italian politician and businessman. He was Prime Minister of Italy from May 1994 to January 1995, June 2001 to May 2006, and May 2008 to November 2011. He was the first to become Prime Minister without first holding another office. He is the leader of a coalition named Forza Italia.

Berlusconi is also the most important manager of Italy, he is the owner of television group Mediaset, of the editorial group "Mondadori" and of the Bank group Mediolanum SpA. He was born in Milan. In July 2020, his net worth was at US$6.3 billion.

Berlusconi had some problems with justice, including fraud (1994, 1996) and corruption (1998). In the 1990s he entered politics and he has been Head of Government in 1994, in 2001 and since 2008 to 2011. On 26 October 2012, he was convicted of fraud. On 1 August 2013, his jail term got confirmed, he will have to serve 4 years, in house arrest, because of his old age. In 2013, Berlusconi was convicted of paying for sex with an underage girl. This conviction was overturned on 18 July 2014.

In 2019, he was elected a member of the European Parliament during the 2019 elections. He was an MEP previously between 1999 and 2001. He was seen as a possible candidate for President of Italy in the 2022 elections.

On 2 September 2020, during the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Berlusconi tested positive to COVID-19. The next day, he was hospitalized in Milan with pneumonia. He was released from the hospital on 14 September.

In April 2023, it was revealed that Berlusconi had leukemia. He died on the morning of 12 June 2023 at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy from the disease at the age of 86.

References

1. ↑"Silvio Berlusconi & family". Forbes.
2. ↑Squires, Nick (26 October 2012)