Giovanni Tamburi 💼 il re della finanza in Italia

Privatizing Enel is unconstitutional. Privatizing Enel? Are you crazy? You have 8.5% of something that has an intrinsic value of about 3 billion, today on the stock market it's at 1.7, 1.6, 1.8 billion. That's already great for me. I never thought when I left Sapienza that I would create something so important. Those who say that listing is complicated don't know what they're talking about. A company's stock market listing is a starting point, never a finish line.

I am Roman. I studied in Rome at university. I graduated with 110 cum laude in Economics and Commerce. Shortly after graduation, I was called by a family friend, one of those you can't say no to, and I came to Milan. I was already working, because after the first year of economics I realized it wasn't particularly difficult, so in three out of four years of university I had already worked, small things, an advertising agency, some consulting. In '77, after finishing university, I did military service. I came to Milan reluctantly because I was fine in Rome, I had a nice house, a nice motorcycle, a girlfriend and everything. In which area of Rome? Via Le Maazzini, Via Settembrini. Very reluctantly, because I said, 'I'm fine here, why are they taking me away?' But I let myself be tempted by this adventure. This person wanted me to join him in Cogefar, a construction company. Actually, shortly after I joined him in Cogefar, he was appointed vice president of Bastogi. In those three years I was with them, I dealt much more with Bastogi than with Cogefar. What did Bastogi mean? A huge financial company with an enormous portfolio of holdings, in great difficulty, so it sold one company a month to pay salaries. An incredible experience, 20 hours a day of work, sometimes 24, skipped lunches, skipped dinners. An exceptional master, in the sense that the general manager of both Cogifer and Bastogi was named Nanni Fabris, who taught me everything. A very junior role, but front office, I spoke directly with the boss, I dealt directly with these things, and it went very well. I did truly exceptional things. In the last of the years I was there, I was contacted by Euromobiliare, which at the time was already a very important merchant bank. They asked, 'Is there someone at Bastogi capable of taking responsibility for the M&A function that needs to be created here at Euromobiliare?' I said, 'Look, at Bastogi we are just three cats, so I can ask around, but there's no one.' A few months pass, I clearly don't give any names, also because we were really just four cats. The people from Euromobiliare call me again and say, 'Why don't you come? We'll pay for courses around Europe, you invest in us and we invest in you.' These very kind people paid for courses in Paris, Lausanne, wherever I wanted to go, and I took all kinds of courses. I started the M&A sector at Euromobiliare. Well, at this point Giovanni Tamburi is more or less my age, and in his first work experiences he approached the M&A sector, that is mergers and acquisitions. If you follow me, you know it's a very recurring theme in my interviews, especially if you've seen the videos with Beni Stabili, who buy several companies every year. Anyway, in these years Giovanni opens a new chapter of his life, that is at Euromobiliare, and starting practically from scratch, in 10 years of career he manages to become director and deputy general manager of the parent company Euromobiliare S.p.A. and also director of Banca Euromobiliare S.p.A. But certainly also because he was an M&A expert and had positioned himself that way in a period when the sector was exploding. Those were the years when private equity started, the M&A of large multinationals buying in Europe and also in Italy.

I was very lucky. In 10 years at Euromobiliare, I went from a young assistant who had to set up the M&A sector to general manager of the entire group, director, head of investment banking. In fact, together with Guido Roberto Vitale and Alberto Milla, the two great historical heads of Euromobiliare, I carried forward this very beautiful project. At this point, how old was he? 36. 36 years old, he was already, let's say, general manager, head of M&A and investment banking, and general manager of the entire Euromobiliare group. That part, then at that moment Euromobiliare had become international, in the sense that Midland Bank had bought Euromobiliare, and then Midland Bank had been bought by Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. I was sent to London for a year to gain experience with the English. Because clearly, being at the top of the Italian group, I had to be part of this international group. And there I understood that I was becoming a bit of a pawn in the hands of this international group, first English, then Anglo-Chinese. I didn't like that much, also because they wanted to invest a lot in me as a young person and in other young people, by stabbing the two great old men of the company in the back. I didn't feel like stabbing those who had wanted me and valued me over time. So one fine day I decided to leave without having anything. I had no job alternative, I hadn't been called by anyone else, I had been called but nothing attracted me. Incidentally, when Guido Vitale found out I was leaving, he was certainly convinced that I was going to someone. I told him, 'I assure you, I'm not going anywhere. I'm retiring, I'll do some thinking, write some books, etc.' So much so that he paid me for a few months even though I wasn't there, because he said, 'But your family, how will you manage?' I had earned very well, so I had no problems, but he very kindly accompanied me, I think at least 6 months of salary, half salary. Anyway, he accompanied me in this. It's curious how in 10 years you assume such an important role. Why, in your opinion, were you good? But what are, in your opinion, the focal points that brought you to Euromobiliare?

I started writing some books on finance and acquisitions. I wrote one of the first books in Italy on stock options. I have always been a fanatic of the motivations and methods of involving managers in shareholding. There were no options for managers, they were very, very rare, especially in Italy. It was more American, considered from much more evolved worlds. Even today, perhaps it's too little. Serious companies all have them. It's a choice of individual entrepreneurs, individual managers, to give one type of agreement rather than another. I got in touch with the university in Rome, Luiss. I knew some people, they gave me a chair at the master's they were founding in Castellanza, Liuc University. And since I knew Marco Vitale and Flavio Sottrici, who were two founders, I told them, 'I would like to come here, even for free, to teach something. I think I have done something.' Immediately they also gave me an assignment. Why did you want to teach? I have always enjoyed the relationship with young people, teaching. It was quite curious that I also wanted to write books when finance, even more so at the time, was reserved, closed salons, very closed worlds, not very open. How did you publish the books? I published them myself, because since I didn't want to waste time with publishers, I created a study center. Among other things, the Study Center on Privatization and Corporate Governance. Talking about corporate governance in the year '90 was something that made people say, 'This guy is crazy.' I did the little bed of privatization and corporate governance. It was certainly a pioneering thing. So I published it myself with this study center. I hired a very good person who followed the more academic, more theoretical part. Then I wrote articles, traveled the world looking for ideas and information. The other luck of that period was that since I had been in England during the period when Touche was doing many privatizations, one day the phone rang and a certain Professor Cappugi called me. He said, 'You don't remember me, but at a dinner in London talking about privatizations, I was next to you. Now Giuliano Amato, the Prime Minister, has given me the task of creating the privatization commission. The Italian government wants you to come and give a hand, because here everyone talks about privatizations but no one knows what they are.' So after 23 months of being alone in my little office in Milan, I left for Rome and began this adventure of privatizations at the Ministry of the Treasury. At the time it was called the brief window of Professor Autore. How long did it last? About a year. In that year, I dedicated myself a lot to privatization. I was in Rome at the Ministry of the Treasury with Giuliano Amato, with Professor Cappugi, a commission of professors of the highest level who were all very worried. 'Privatizing Enel is unconstitutional. Enel? Are you crazy?' We did it and it worked well. And that was a state role, a real job. Yes, not only was it a real job, but among other things, the Ministry of the Treasury at the time did not provide for bank transfers, so at the end of the month you went to the counter office of the Ministry of the Treasury and they gave you, I don't remember how much now, but anyway money in banknotes and coins. It was another salary, in the Ministry it was very low, ridiculous, but it was that little fun thing. And I liked this role of being a commissioner of exceptional weight. I won't name names because some are still alive and still very famous, so I'll avoid it. But certainly people of the highest level. Anyway, a fundamental historical moment: the privatization of the great companies. We wrote Law 35, or rather Luigi Cappugi, Matelda Grassi, who was a lawyer within this commission, and I, against, quote-unquote, almost all the others, wrote Law 35, which is the one that unlocked Enel and then the various privatizations of IRI, such as Banca Commerciale Italiana, Credito Italiano. Immense fun for someone like me who loved M&A, loved these things, but was also intellectually stimulated to say, 'Let's do something for the country system, for this particular world where there are enormous savings, sluggish markets, a state asset not sufficiently valorized.' In the last months of this year, some sirens started ringing from people who were my clients when I was at Euromobiliare.

Because I was a well-off guy who had this project in mind, and we did a few years of pure M&A, assistance for acquisitions, stock market listings, divestitures, mergers. Great success there too, because the network of friends worked quite well. Was it the legal part or just advisory on how to do it? Legal, zero. We were purely financial advisors. Among other things, perhaps in that first year I wrote yet another book, 'Buying a Company: How and Why', which Sperling & Kupfer published for me, which was an incredible success for me, if only to have such a prestigious publisher decide to publish my book. I believe it was the first book in Italy on acquisitions, and I inaugurated this season of acquisitions done professionally, not with the friend broker, the accountant, the agent. What operations did you do in those early years? We did all the operations for Raul Gardini and Giulio Malgara, Acqua Levissima with San Pellegrino, then sold to Nestlé. How did you recover clients? The clients were a bit those who were born at Euromobiliare before and had remained fond, then word of mouth. That's what works in Milan yesterday, today, and I believe also tomorrow: word of mouth. There are three, four, five smart, fast guys who follow you well, 20 hours a day, and help you complete your operation. Did you also start managing people at that moment? Before, I did everything. Well, before two, then three, then four, then five. The more I did these operations, the more I realized that in Italy there was a lack of an operator with the characteristics of a minority investor, without leverage, without resorting to funds. Because funds by definition mean you buy today but you have to sell tomorrow, otherwise they are not funds. Those who in 3 years have to make profits. I buy for the very long term. I buy for the very long term, at the limit I never sell, I create wealth. This operator was missing. And at a certain point I launched the idea of doing this thing. I launched it with four friends, among other things people I had worked with for M&A in that period, and the thing was quite well received. So much so that it was January 2001, we went to the notary in March 2001, we were 56 to subscribe the capital. I didn't want banks, I didn't want institutions, I didn't want anyone heavy or important, because I had the small or great presumption that no one would give me a little lesson on how to do this job. So who were they? Entrepreneurs, families. Entrepreneurs, families, those who are still many shareholders today. How much did you raise? About fifty million euros, so it went better than expected, and we started. First with the more technological part, in the sense that first of all we thought we would raise much less. Obviously I promised that one day we would go public, because I don't do a fund, I don't want to do what in 3 years buys and sells, but I have to give you liquidity if you invest in me. So I promised that within 5 years this little thing of little value would be taken public. So if someone wants to liquidate, they sell their shares on the market, everything is free. It's a bit like Warren Buffett's mentality. In theory yes, but well, he is good and we are good guys. This idea was born, we started. We listed after 4 years. The listing went very well. The families had reached more than 100 at the time of listing. Satisfaction at that moment was that Kairos, Herel, many very important asset management institutions entered our capital. So it was a great satisfaction too.

As for the process of getting listed, were there objectives, results, critical mass that had to be achieved before being able to list, or was it just a matter of bureaucratic hurdles? How did it work? My detractors say that I would list even the bar across the street on Via Pontaccio. Actually, it's a bit true. I believe that if Google, Microsoft, Amazon and company are listed, it means that listing has some utility. So I had set it as a must: first, to return to my investors, keeping a promise, keeping a commitment; second, because I seriously believed that the market could be the best response to such an innovative, particular, atypical initiative compared to everything else. Was it complicated? Those who say that listing is complicated don't know what they're talking about. It's clear that you have to make a very detailed, very thorough information prospectus, but everything can be done. Also because, in my opinion, a company's stock market listing is a starting point, never a finish line. If you are convinced that that starting point can take you far, the details, bureaucracies, hurdles, you solve them, you do it without any problem. At the beginning, we wanted to do more of the technological part, 2001.com, we wanted to ride that wave, also a bit tactically. So we started. But then we quickly realized that we were more suited to helping the companies we had worked with for M&A in the previous 20 years, and so we very quickly moved to medium-sized companies, growing companies, companies capable of making acquisitions. Not on tech startups, which by definition are a bit fragile. What were the first important acquisitions that perhaps made a bit of news? The most important of the older ones: Interpump. We entered about 23 years ago in Interpump, doing a club deal, which 23 years ago was a new, almost revolutionary thing. On the other hand, I liked the idea of acquiring a stake from a private equity fund. The company had been listed on the stock exchange, the stake had remained quite important, the fund wanted to sell but didn't want to place it on the market. I acquired it together with five or six important families who had joined us at the time, and we created this PC, the holding company started the operation. This was certainly the important one of that era. Then we did many others later. What guided you, also personal objectives? One wakes up in the morning, working is difficult. One says, 'What keeps me going?' I have always had, since university and the thesis I did, the feeling that this country was overflowing with savings, with many beautiful, undercapitalized companies, and with inadequate financial markets, not very American. We are very little American. So my dream was to say, 'Why don't we give a small hand to create a small nucleus of listed or to-be-listed companies in a market that must grow?' Because the market of the Italian entrepreneur: if everything goes well, he passes the company to his son. If the son is good, the company goes forward; if the son is not good, the company stops. That was too narrow for me. In the last 20 years, let me run through the operations and important things that have happened at TIP up to today. Let's say the first important one was Interpump. Then we entered Prismian, then Data Logic, then Amplifon, then many other companies, some of which are still in the group today: Moncler, OVS. We have always accumulated more investments and sold very little. In the sense that we have sold very few stakes, in very particular cases where there was either a misalignment of views with the majority shareholder, or an objective situation that we no longer liked very much, or an offer from groups, perhaps international, that decided to buy 100% of the company we had entered. This has weighed little. From the beginning to today, we have invested between 6 and 7 billion euros, divestments a few hundred million. We have this characteristic of truly growing, first of all ourselves. What is the strategy? We talk about minority stakes, the opposite of the activist investor who takes the majority and changes the board. On the other hand, I imagine there was still a strategic advisory role. We are always, or in very few cases we are not, on the boards. But beyond board presence, which means up to a certain point, we believe we participate very actively in many activities, in many companies. We try to give a hand especially on so-called extraordinary growth, on acquisitions, mergers, etc. Because both my personal DNA and that of most of my colleagues is to be M&A experts. It is clear that the first know-how you make available to companies is that. Let me give an example of a company we left relatively recently: Prismian, a huge company, ex-Pirelli cables, acquired by Goldman Sachs Private Equity, listed by Goldman Sachs Private Equity. There too, as in Interpump, we acquired the last little piece of the stake that Goldman Sachs had. We began a truly virtuous path of growth, with two very important acquisitions, one in Europe and one in America, which in the Goldman Sachs period had not been done because they would have diluted the return on investment over time, they would have created debt, thus creating problems for the investor who wanted to exit, who exited very quickly. We did them precisely with a view to a 10-year, 15-year operation. And it was a wonderful ride. Once Prismian was more or less the same size as the second in the world in cables, now it is three times, perhaps four times the second in the world, absolute technological leader and from the point of view of services both in Europe, America, and in much of Asia. So effectively, the beauty of these operations is creating number ones at an international level, without problems of saying, 'I'm afraid to do this operation, this operation is too risky, this operation will take a long time to amortize.' But always with a measured step. We have never done operations with great use of financial leverage; we have always done operations more with equity than with debt. And so we have accompanied the companies. Also Moncler: we were at less than 100 stores when I met Remo Ruffini in this room. Now we are at more than 300. We followed the company. We also sold part of the Moncler shares over time when our value multiplied by N times, but we still have a very important stake. There too, a club deal was made, families were brought in, and all these families made a very high return on investment. We are very happy.

We try to invest in the good ones. It's not that we say, 'Let's see a return on investment of X, let's make mega business plans.' We go a lot by instinct, by feeling, by what we think can be valorized. A Pirelli cables became Prismian, already among the first in the world, perhaps already number one in the world at the time. If you valorize it even more with extraordinary finance operations, with intelligent organic rationalization operations, it can't betray you. If you invest in number ones and invest in a healthy way, it's rare that the companies betray you. Has there ever been a case where you invested in smaller companies where you didn't yet know if they were number ones? Many years ago, we decided to take investments in the innovative technology part. We created a company called StarTip with the idea of saying, 'We look for companies, even very young ones.' But we divided that world into two: the true startup, that is, one that is born with zero revenue, we thought it was more suitable to have it seen by Digital Magics, which has now become Zest. We entered Digital Magics many years ago because it has an investment model very similar to ours. The only condition we placed in that case was, 'Sooner or later, go public, list me, because we want to do a sort of TIP of innovation and startups through you, so that you do that type of operation.' For those that already have a rigorous turnover of 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, we decided to invest directly through StarTip. Some things went well, some less well. Certainly more risky. In that case, we never did club deals. StarTip is 100% of TIP because with the risk connected to that stuff, we didn't feel like proposing it to the families. Because we wanted to understand, and we still want to understand well, what can work. Then we evaluate. In some of the companies we invested in, at a later time we brought in families, and we hope they go well. What will be the most difficult part of this journey? Have there been moments when unpleasant things happened, crises you had to face, or just some down moments? I would say that the operation that went worst for us over the years was Mariella Burani Fashion Group. Interesting family, growing group, all good. We entered, and among other things, we entered after the divestment of BC Capital, so the fund of Arn. We did a good journey together. Unfortunately, in those years, finance had become a bit too fashionable, and so the Burani family was proposed to list Antichi Pellettieri, that is, the accessories part of Mariella Burani, and it was listed. Then it was proposed to list the holding company of Mariella Burani, something we were not very much in agreement with. We understood that they were starting to overdo it with finance, and so we began to sell the shares and we escaped in time. Then everything collapsed. Fortunately, so far we have rarely lost money. In that case, we lost quite a bit in relative terms, but in relative terms we also had the small satisfaction of not being among those who, when the whole group collapsed, lost 100%. Are there mentors, authors, Italian or foreign investors who have guided you a bit? I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I would say no. In the sense that in Italy we were the first to do permanent capital, patient capital, minority stakes, not funds. Today it's full of people who do this job, but with our formula of a listed investment company, coherently focused on the long term, there are few of us. There is an American TIP? I don't know them, but certainly there are many, also because America is so articulated that there is everything, especially in finance. One of my many fortunes over the years was not to try to chase a model, but to try to adapt to the Italian financial system, but above all industrial system, something that seemed more coherent to me than the funds that buy, put in new management, if it goes well, good, if it goes badly, thank you and goodbye, I cancel, put a cross on it, and move on to the next. We see in many companies where private equity funds have entered that the day after closing, they move on to the next. That's not great. Then actually, private equity has done good for Italian industry, for world industry, it has made companies grow, removed some encrustations, deprovincialized families, increased staff, brought out more talent globally. It has been positive. But since three out of four private equity fund operations are done with leverage, I have the impression that it has somewhat clipped the wings of many companies that could have done more and better, but with this fixation of reselling within 3, 4, 5 years, they found themselves in a more limited, more limiting situation, not encouraging for the future.