Giovanni Bazoli (

Brescia Brescia (, locally ; lmo, link=no, label= Lombard, Brèsa ; lat, Brixia; vec, Bressa) is a city and ''comune'' in the region of Lombardy, Northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Garda and Iseo. ...

, 18 December 1932) is an Italian banker. He is honorary chairman of Italian bank

Intesa Sanpaolo Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A. is an Italian international banking group. It is Italy's largest bank by total assets and the world's 27th largest. It was formed through the merger of Banca Intesa and Sanpaolo IMI in 2007, but has a corporate identity s ...

Family

Bazoli is the descendant of a well known

n family involved in politics since the early twentieth century (his grandfather, Luigi Bazoli, was one of the founders of Italian People's Party in 1919, and his father was a member of the Constituent Assembly).

Career

Bazoli was a professor of Administrative Law and Public Law at the Università Cattolica Milano until retiring from his university career in 2001. While serving as a director of Banca San Paolo di Brescia in 1982, then Treasury Minister Nino Andreatta asked him to contribute to the bailout of

Banco Ambrosiano Banco Ambrosiano was an Italian bank that collapsed in 1982. At the centre of the bank's failure was its chairman, Roberto Calvi, and his membership in the illegal former Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due (aka P2). The Vatican-based Institute for the ...

, the Italian bank overwhelmed by the Calvi scandal. He became chairman of Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano and managed the sale of Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera (now

RCS MediaGroup RCS MediaGroup S.p.A. (formerly Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera), based in Milan and listed on the Italian Stock Exchange, is an international multimedia publishing group that operates in daily newspapers, magazines and books, radio broadcasting, ne ...

), the market-leading editorial group that Angelo Rizzoli had sold to Calvi. At the time, Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera was Italy's largest editorial group. As chairman of Mittel, one of the companies that took part in the acquisition of Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera, he benefited personally from the transaction. He merged Nuovo Banco with Banca Cattolica del Veneto, forming

Banco Ambrosiano Veneto Banco Ambrosiano Veneto, also known as Banco Ambroveneto for short, was an Italian bank formed in 1989 by the merger of Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano (the bank replacing the collapsed Banco Ambrosiano) with Banca Cattolica del Veneto. Since 1989, Crédit ...

(BAV). In 1990, he was instrumental in getting the French group

Crédit Agricole Crédit Agricole Group (), sometimes called La banque verte ( en, The green bank) due to its historical ties to farming, is a French international banking group and the world's largest cooperative financial institution. It is France's second lar ...

to become one of BAV's shareholders, thereby thwarting Gemina’s attempt to take on a leading role in the bank. The 1997 merger of BAV and Cariplo led to the creation of Banca Intesa, with Bazoli becoming the new bank's chairman. In later years, Banca Intesa merged with

Banca Commerciale Italiana Banca Commerciale Italiana (COMIT), founded in 1894, was once one of the largest banks in Italy. In 1999 it merged with a banking group consisting of Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde (aka Cariplo; est. 1823) and Banco Ambroveneto, wh ...

(1999) and

Sanpaolo IMI Sanpaolo IMI S.p.A. was an Italian banking and insurance conglomerate, based in Turin. It employed about 44,000 people and had about 7 million customers. On 24 August 2006 a merger with Banca Intesa was announced, which on 1 December 2006 was app ...

(2007), thus creating the current

Current appointments

– Honorary Chairman *Fondazione Giorgio Cini – Chairman *Editrice La Scuola S.p.A. – Deputy Chairman *

UBI Banca Unione di Banche Italiane S.p.A., commonly known for its trading name UBI Banca, was an Italian banking group, the fifth largest in Italy by number of branches. It was formed on 1 April 2007 from the merger of the Banche Popolari Unite (trading ...

S.p.A. – Member of Supervisory board *

Associazione Bancaria Italiana Associazione Bancaria Italiana is the trade association of Italian banks. The association was founded in 1919, few years after the Association of Italian Saving Banks (ACRI, founded 1912), the Association of Italian Rural Credit Unions (''Cassa R ...

– Director and member of the Executive Committee *Biblioteca Ambrosiana – Member of "Congregazione dei Conservatori" *RCS Quotidiani S.p.A. – Director *Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei – Director *FAI Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano – Member of “Comitato dei Garanti”

Personal life

Bazoli is also known for his passion for biblical studies and for his center-left political leanings. According to media sources, Bazoli is said to have declined an offer to run as leader of the Ulivo coalition in the 2001 political elections, a role then taken on by

Francesco Rutelli Francesco Rutelli (born 14 June 1954) is an Italian journalist and former politician, who is the president of '' Anica'', National Association of Film and Audiovisual Industry, since October 2016. He also chairs the "Centro per un Futuro Sosteni ...

. He is married to Elena Whurer and they have four children.

Honour

* : Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (27 December 2000)

References

External links

* Maurilio Lovatti
''Giovanni Bazoli e la proprietà del Giornale di Brescia dal 1945 al 1996''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bazoli, Giovanni 1932 births Living people Academic staff of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Italian bankers Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic