Late banker known as `the high priest of Italian capitalism' clad his life in secrecy

For a man who was variously referred to as "the high priest of Italian capitalism", "the mysterious mastermind" or "the Sicilian puppet-master", the late banker Mr Enrico Cuccia looked disarmingly innocuous. Although he tended to clad his life in secrecy, resolutely refusing to give interviews, his face and his hunched-over, diminutive old man's figure were nonetheless familiar items on the landscape of Italian public life.

Not many Italians could explain why the most authoritative commentators in the land from former Fiat president Mr Gianni Agnelli to Bank of Italy governor Mr Antonio Fazio all paid handsome tributes to Mr Cuccia, following his death at the age of 92 two weeks ago. Nor could many explain Mr Cuccia's role of "determining importance" in the "fragile capitalism" of post-war Italy (Mr Fazio's words). Yet, many Italians would have instantly recognised him, since his recluse ways inevitably attracted the curiosity of television.

Time and again, TV crews tried to intercept him as he made his well known walk from his apartment in Milan's Via Mascagni across to his office at the "merchant" or "investment" bank, Mediobanca, in Via Filodrammatici, close to the famous La Scala opera house. Mr Cuccia always ignored the TV crews, maintaining his slow and steady step all the way to the office, never uttering a word.

Only once, less than two years ago, did Mr Cuccia stop to speak to the cameras and that was when he had been fooled by a Massimo D'Alema look-alike actor. Even then, even when he thought he was speaking to the Italian prime minister of the day, Mr Cuccia exchanged little more than a courtesy greeting.

Mr Cuccia was not a man for public words. His work was all done behind the scenes. It was in his role as Mediobanca chairman since 1947 that he at one time exerted an almost total control over the Italian private sector, weaving together a spider's web of interconnecting companies largely financed and administered by the "salotto buono" or establishment elite of Italian "family" capitalism, including companies such as Fiat, Olivetti, Pirelli, Montecatini, Edison, Assicurazioni Generali and many others besides.

Ironically, just a few days after Mr Cuccia's death, the state holding company IRI was formally closed. The co-incidence of the two events escaped no one. In an obvious way, both Mr Cuccia and IRI were children of their time, reflecting the enigmatic nature of an Italian post-war capitalism that often seemed to take its inspiration and modus operandi more from Bulgaria than New York. Until well into the '90s, for instance, the Italian state, through its huge state holding companies like IRI and ENI, continued to account for up to 55 per cent of GDP.

Originally set up under Mussolini's fascist regime, IRI, for example, was greatly boosted in the immediate post-war era by the Christian Democrat party which increased its "portfolio" by nationalising a host of private companies. At one time, IRI controlled not only state broadcaster RAI, state airline Alitalia, shipping line Lloyd Triestino, steel company Finsider, car company Alfa Romeo, the SME food retail distribution group but also three of the country's largest banks - Credito Italiano, Banca di Roma and Banca Commerciale Italiana. It was these latter three banks which in 1947 founded Mediobanca.

Mr Cuccia, like many of Italy's most prominent private sector companies (Fiat is an obvious example), for long managed to have the best of both worlds, apparently operating in a totally private sector yet at the same time able to exert political influence and call on state benefits when necessary.

In this context, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that Mr Cuccia had an important role in Italy's remarkable post-war economic revival. At the same time, he adopted an elitist attitude to business practises that would hardly go far in the brave new world of globalisation. In his renaissance realpolitik way, he was fond of the motto that "shares should be weighed not counted". For a stock market share to have "weight" in the Cuccia scheme of things, it usually had to come complete with a thoroughbred lineage of reliable, true-blue, all Italian salotto buono backers.

Mr Cuccia's enigmatic personality was perhaps well reflected in his dealings with Sicilian banker and later convicted murderer Michele Sindona. In April 1979, after Sindona's Banca Privata Italiana had collapsed, Sindona appealed to Mr Cuccia for help. Mr Cuccia met Sindona in New York but refused point blank to offer any help, receiving by way of riposte from Sindona a threat on his son's life.

In that same conversation, Sindona also threatened to have the liquidator of the Banca Privata, Mr Giorgio Ambrosoli, "taken out". Three months later, in July 1979, Mr Ambrosoli was murdered outside his Milan apartment building, shot by a Mafia hit-man called William Arico who had been hired by Sindona.

At Sindona's subsequent trial for the murder of Mr Ambrosoli, Mr Cuccia was called to give evidence. Asked by a lawyer acting on behalf of Mr Ambrosoli's widow as to why he had never told anyone of the threat on Mr Ambrosoli's life, he replied: "Ambrosoli had already been threatened many times . . . I'm also convinced that in matters like this, silence is the best option."

Commenting on the co-incidence of the timing of Mr Cuccia's death and the closure of IRI, no less authoritative a commentator than Prime Minister Giuliano Amato suggested that both events inevitably signalled the end of an era in Italian capitalism, adding: "We are now in a new season of a capitalism that is more open, more based on the market and more competitive."

With all due respect to the late Mr Cuccia, such a more "open" and "competitive" era is long overdue.