I’ll tell you when Scalfari joyfully sold Repubblica to De Benedetti
The sale of the newspaper Repubblica founded by Scalfari to De Benedetti told by Giovanni Valentini, columnist for Repubblica for years and now signature of Fatto Quotidiano. Excerpt from " The novel of Italian journalism " (The Ship of Theseus)
One bad morning in 1989 Scalfari summoned Marco Benedetto and me to Repubblica to formally announce the decision to sell the Group to De Benedetti.
It was a short and rapid speech, during which Eugenio betrayed some emotion: “I, as you know, have no male heirs. My two daughters have no intention of going into publishing. By now the Group has expanded too much to continue to do it alone and needs to strengthen itself on a financial level. De Benedetti is already our partner, he is a friend and I believe he is the best person to whom we can pass the baton."
Although the "rumor" had been circulating for some time, for us it was a surprise. Marco and I fell silent. The operation was decided and all that remained was to take note of it. Paolo Panerai, journalist and founder of the Class publishing house, explains in his book entitled Le mani sull'formazione : “Listed on the stock exchange, thanks to a weekly magazine ( L'Espresso , ed. ) which had recently reached the peak of its fortune, surpassing Panorama – and the cracks were not yet visible – rich in 50% of what would become the second Italian daily newspaper in fact managed by Caracciolo and Scalfari despite the governance of the alternation at the top of the board with the men of Mondadori, the L 'Espresso-Repubblica was the ideal target for De Benedetti, who was increasingly politically aligned to the left.'
Eugenio had pre-sold his strategic share, the second of the shareholders' agreement after that of Caracciolo, obtaining the same advantageous conditions for him and the other shareholders out of loyalty: Aldo Bassetti, ousted at the time by his family for having purchased shares of the Expressed; Cristina Busi, widow of the Bolognese entrepreneur who was the Coca-Cola concessionaire in Emilia Romagna, including the Adriatic Riviera; the pharmaceutical industrialist, Claudio Cavazza, inventor of carnitine who – according to legend – had allowed our national football team to win the World Championships in Spain in 1982 and a great collector of works of art; Mario Ciancio, director-publisher of the newspaper La Sicilia in Catania , owner of some television stations and then of the Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno in Bari, destined to become president of Fieg (the Federation of newspaper publishers) in '96 with the support of the Red Prince .
For Scalfari, the deal brought in around 80 billion of the old lire out of a total of 450: a "bundle of money", as De Benedetti would later throw in his face in an unfortunate and unpleasant television outing, in January 2018, during the broadcast Eight and a half by Lilli Gruber on La7. But Caracciolo and his minor partners also made a nice profit thanks to Eugenio's move. So the Engineer overpaid for the purchase of the L'Espresso Group and was finally able to have “Editore” printed under his name and surname on the business card.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/scalfari-repubblica-vendita-de-benedetti/ on Sun, 26 Nov 2023 06:07:59 +0000.