Who is Gianni Mion, the wizard of finance always alongside the Benettons

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At the top of the group for over a quarter of a century. Gianni Mion, born in 1943 and originally from Vo’, is the one who over the years has played a central role in the industrial and financial growth of the entire Benetton galaxy. He joined the company in 1986. And he arrived there because he was led by Gilberto Benetton who had known him in the state-owned company Gepi, the Società per le Gestioni e Partecipazioni Industriali.

The public experience, from 1974 to 1983, was a key training ground for forming the managerial profile of Mion who in those years was able to develop a profound knowledge of the cross-section of state shareholdings. Skills then exploited on the occasion of the privatization race which, not by chance, on an economic level, gave the Ponzano Veneto dynasty a lot of satisfaction.

The link with Gamberale

Again in those rooms he created that connection with Vito Gamberale (in Gepi between 1977 and 1984) later dusted off in the Autostrade dossier when Treviso, the only bidder, in 2000 won, together with Unicredit and Fondazione Crt, control of the first concessionaire of the country. An operation that mirrors the approach used by the galaxy over the years: a lot of finance. And in this regard the most capable mind, because very lucid and very fast, was that of Mion, right from the start Gilberto’s right-hand man, even referred to by some as “the man who invented financial architecture”, capable over the years of weaving that invisible thread that has linked numbers, facts and personalities that have characterized the growth of Ponzano Veneto.

The Autostrade takeover bid

It is no coincidence that it was Mion himself who set up the Autostrade takeover bid in 2003 which, with recourse to financial leverage, brought the Benetton family to absolute control (up to 80%) of the concessionaire. Mion, began working on it in complete secrecy with the help of Carlo Bertazzo and Sandro Saccardi, both long-time managers in Edizione. In fact, Schema28, the vehicle used together with Newco28, to complete the operation, spent the entire investment on the infrastructure group, approximately 2.5 billion euros, in just nine years thanks to dividends and the sale of Autostrade tranches on the market.

The project with Abertis

And there was always Mion behind the merger project with Abertis, in 2006, then blocked by the then Minister of Transport, Antonio Di Pietro. Calling him to propose the maxi aggregation was directly the president of Caixa, Isidrò Fanè, a strong partner of the Iberian concessionaire, testifying to the key role played by the manager in the Ponzano Veneto galaxy. The definitive agreement was found on Easter Monday, it was April 17, 2006, at the Hotel Monaco in Venice, all the main protagonists of the operation, the Spanish front and the Italian front, were seated around a table, including Mion himself , Gilberto Benetton and obviously Florentino Perez, another significant shareholder of Abertis, as well as president of Real Madrid. And on that occasion Perez himself confided to Mion that he wanted to bring Antonio Cassano and Francesco Totti to the Santiago Bernabeu.