User:Franco Bernabè

Franco Bernabè was born in Vipiteno/Sterzing (Sudtirol, Italy) on September 18, 1948. He is Vice Chairman of Rothschild Europe and Chairman of FB Group.

Mr. Bernabè joined the Rothschild Group in 2004 contributing to Rothschild Spa the financial advisory company he founded in the year 1999.

Prior to this, he was CEO of Telecom Italia from 1998 to 1999, and CEO of Eni from 1992 to 1998, where he achieved the turnaround of the company and its successful privatization. During his two terms, Eni was transformed from a loss making state entity into the largest company by market capitalization in Italy and one of the most successful oil companies worldwide. He joined Eni in 1983 as an Assistant to the Chairman and became subsequently the Head of Corporate Planning, Financial Control and Corporate Development. Prior to his joining Eni, he worked in the planning department of Fiat as a Chief Economist. He started his career as a Senior Economist at the OECD Department of Economics and Statistics in Paris.

Mr. Bernabè has served pro bono on different public assignments: in 1999 he was appointed by the Italian Prime Minister as a special representative of the Italian government for the reconstruction of Kosovo; between 2001 and 2003 he was the Chairman of La Biennale di Venezia, and since 2004 he is the Chairman of Mart, the foremost Italian museum of modern art. He has served on the Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations and currently serves on the Board of the Peres Center for Peace and on the Advisory Board of the Observatoire Méditerranéen de l'Énergie; he is a member of the Board of Petrochina and Pininfarina Spa.

Mr. Bernabè is also Chairman and majority shareholder of FB Group, an investment company that he founded after leaving Telecom Italia in 1999, which is active in the areas of innovative ICT and renewable energy. As an entrepreneur, he has been particularly active in the telecom sector - as a founder of Andala H3G, and as one of the controlling shareholders of Netscalibur and of Telit, contributing to the turnaround of the two companies – and in the software sector through the companies of the Kelyan Group, focusing on ICT solutions for the extended enterprise as well as on value-added services for the telecommunication industry.

Mr. Bernabè graduated in 1973 from the University of Turin and worked as a post-graduate fellow in economics at the Einaudi Foundation from 1973 to 1975. He is married and has two children.