At table with Giovanni Tamburi

'Privatisation, the cruise on the Britannia and the five voices to prosper'

by Paolo Bricco

23 November 2025

6' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

6' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

"My paternal great-grandfather Emilio Diena fled to Rome from Modena where, according to family accounts, he had ruined himself with a passion for philately. He owned the Banco Diena. But he didn't care enough. He was crazy about stamps. Even today the Diena collections are still fought over by enthusiasts and are worth millions. The bank went bankrupt and became a part of the Banca Popolare di Modena. His daughter Augusta in Rome married my grandfather Ambrogio, a lawyer. My father Emilio, their son, after graduating in statistics worked at Fao, where he was in charge of fishing. We lived in Via Settembrini and Viale Mazzini. The other side of the family were the Amaldis, mathematicians and physicists. Uncle Edoardo was one of the boys from Via Panisperna. His wife Ginestra was also a physicist. The Amaldis had a large agricultural estate in Carpaneto Piacentino. When I was eleven I used to spend my holidays there. And I used to go every day to the tobacco shop in the village to sell unfiltered nationals'.

Giovanni Tamburi - born in 1954, an investor in industrial enterprises by profession, another honorary member of the factory fraternity - is determined but not fierce, in his own gentlemanly way, never aggressive. He comes from a Roman bourgeois family, but knows a lot about northern entrepreneurs. He grew up in the capital and has never repudiated it. He loves Milan and knows how much the North - well known in the 1980s in Euromobiliare, the merchant bank of Guido Roberto Vitale and Alberto Milla, the only alternative to the hegemony of Enrico Cuccia's Mediobanca - is rich in stories and adventures, in successes and defeats, in wealth built and assets squandered, in factories and roads to be travelled between villages, cities and the world.

We are at the Baretto, a classic for those who, in the Milan of professions, banks and businesses, want to eat knowing that, at the table next to them, they will find their peers and not the holograms made of meat, liposuction and plastic surgery of TV and social media. No, no wine, according to the Ambrosian rite of the fast and polished midday meal, a rule in this case valid for teetotalers (like him) and non-teetotalers (like me).

The Roman post-World War II bourgeoisie was interesting and lively, affluent but not obsessed with wealth, unscrupulous in its way but not prejudiced. Tamburi recounts: 'The Tasso classical high school and the Righi scientific high school, which I preferred, were challenging schools. We were naturally Catholic. It was obvious and fun to be Cub Scouts and then Boy Scouts. At weekends during high school I was a salesman in a shop on Via del Corso, Funaro Sport. As a present for my 18th birthday, I got a ride in a Fiat 127 to the factories in the North, whose products I sold to Roman customers: I visited the factories of Nordica, Spalding, Tecnica and Rossignol'.

At Baretto we ask for the pizzas and mini-toast squares that Tamburi has a sweet tooth for. They are brought late and in minimal quantities by a waiter in slight embarrassment, in a denial of the Milanese abundance that seems to represent Milan's difficult moment, with Mediobanca conquered by a Monte dei Paschi no longer Sienese but wholly Roman, the real estate investigations that after having terrorized the city come to nothing, the persistent and deep leadership crisis of the Sala junta.

Here comes the encore of pizzas and mini-toasts. And, both of us, we are delighted. Tamburi picks up the thread: 'In Rome, from Turin, Edoardo Agnelli, the eldest son of the Avvocato and Donna Marella, used to come from time to time to join my company of friends. But you could tell he belonged to another level, another dimension, another world. We shared a passion for motorbikes. Japanese motorbikes could not yet be imported. I had a twin-cylinder Honda 250, a jewel. He had a Honda 350, white and red like mine. They were unique in Rome'.

For starters, Giovanni takes a spider crab, while I choose a plate of porcini mushrooms. Tamburi is a more complex personality than the simplified image and standard appearance of the investor who, with his technical skills and flair for high-potential companies, has greatly helped the Italian industrial system of internationalised medium-sized companies to develop over the last twenty-five years. In Italy, he participated between 1991 and 1992 in the writing of Law 35 on privatisation ('I was part of the first commission chaired by Luigi Cappugi, an expression of the Ministry of the Budget led by Paolo Cirino Pomicino during the last Andreotti government, maintaining my position during the government of Giuliano Amato, who carried forward with great determination the project to privatise everything possible') and took part in the organisation of the cruise on the Britannia: 'The Britannia docked in Civitavecchia, Mario Draghi director general of the Treasury came on board, read the speech on the privatisation programme to foreign investors, and immediately stepped off the yacht'.

The interesting thing is that Tamburi, in his mix of Roman and Milanese, understood from an early age how complicated things are, never easy to interpret, always to respect, rarely to judge. His father's best friend was Franco Nobili, a public manager of great power, pure Andreottian. Nobili was president and managing director of Cogefar, construction sector. Tamburi says, in an account that makes compact and rational the comings and goings between yesterday and today, Rome and Milan, Italy and the world, economics and politics, the factory and power: 'In 1977 I had just graduated in economics and commerce from the Sapienza University. He was appointed vice-president of Bastogi, the finance company into which the public proceeds of the nationalisation of energy had flowed years earlier. Cogefar was in Rome. Bastogi was in Milan. He called me and told me I should go and work at Bastogi. I didn't want to go to Milan. But I couldn't say no to him. Not only because of his charisma and influence. But also because of the affection and friendship that bound him to my parents. He had a trusted man of great operational ability, Nanni Fabris, general manager of both companies. I was Fabris' assistant for three years. One day a week in Rome. The others in Milan. In Milan, Nobili's office adjoined Fabris's. Just outside were the two secretaries, Tina and Alma. In the middle, behind a small desk, was me. I was almost offended. But I had understood nothing. I soon understood. Many people passed through there: Giulio Andreotti, Amintore Fanfani, major businessmen and public and private executives'.

Lunch continues with my branzino and its curried prawns. In Italy where everything is very complex, good and evil are never concentrated in a single geographical place (in Milan the good and in Rome the evil) or in a single anthropological category (among private entrepreneurs the good and among public managers of political extraction the evil). Bastogi had been central in Italian private and public capitalism. It had shares in railway companies, in Montedison, in Sme, in Beni Stabili. In 1971, the Cosa Nostra-friendly financier Michele Sindona tried to take it over through the Centrale Finanziaria, but failed. At the end of the 1960s, Bastogi was outside the black perimeter of crime and business of an Italian historical period which saw on 11 July 1979 the American hitman William Aricò kill the liquidator of Sindona's private bank Giorgio Ambrosoli, a great friend of Fabris, who had been on the board of Cogefar, and which would see Ambrosiano banker Roberto Calvi die on 17 June 1982, under the Black Friars Bridge in London. However, Bastogi was in very poor financial condition. Tamburi reconstructs: 'In Bastogi there was the cream of private entrepreneurship. Among others, the Torchiani, Grandi, Monti and Pesenti families. In theory they wanted to create a merchant bank. In practice they were all intent on favouring the interests of their respective companies. Then I realised two things. I learned what had to be done in order not to risk breaking up companies. Because, in the full contradiction between the interests of shareholders and those of the company, the former cannot be preferred to the latter. That was very useful to me in the years that followed. Then I learned that companies live, recover and thrive on five balance sheet items: cash, fixed assets, inventory, capital and debt. Fabris, a great simplifier, taught me this. As a minority shareholder, I have always tried to bring a contribution not only of strategic vision, but also of serene simplification and rejection of the short-termism that, today, dominates everything and everyone too much. Today, stock market visions change every day, to the point of the absurdity of quarterly reports, which impose obligations and procedures that are often asphyxiating,' concludes Giovanni Tamburi, an entrepreneur-investor in love with companies and long-term strategies, a devotee (as a child and boy) of sales in shops and (as an adult) of manufacturing in factories and - like me - finally very satisfied with cream ice cream with marron glacée.