Other than Ray. Franco Bernabè, the former CEO of Eni and former president of Telecom Italia, has much more on his mind, even if his name is almost obligatory in the list of candidates for the new top management of Rai. But the horizons and objectives of the top manager from Vipiteno are different. And mainly two: venture capital and high-level business consultancy.
Bernabè is collecting resources (40 million) for the venture capital fund Stark One which he founded with Cesare Sironi and Marco Grillo and which has already received the adhesion of the Italian investment fund of the Cdp. Stark One will select and focus on the best start-ups that know how to develop cloud applications and big data software.
But venture capital is not the only commitment of the former Telecom president. Advisory is the other field of action of Bernabè who became a senior partner of Advent a few months ago, one of the largest US private equity funds, and has a consultancy relationship with the British bank Barclays for strategic transactions and m&a but not for retail.
Precisely with Advent, in partnership with Bain Capital, Bernabè is in the running in recent weeks for the acquisition of ICBPI, the institute of cooperative banks which supplies the infrastructure for payments and services for a large part of the Italian banking system, whose sale will yield rich capital gains to the Popolari who are its shareholders.
