How Francesco built the fortune
Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone comes from a Roman family of builders and began his career in its construction business in the 1960s. Rome's rapid postwar growth created strong demand for housing and public works, and the company grew by building residential districts and taking part in infrastructure projects. Over time Caltagirone turned this base into a broad industrial and financial group, run through the holding company Caltagirone SpA.
A turning point came in 1992, when the Italian state sold the cement maker Cementir as part of its privatisation programme and Caltagirone acquired control. Cement gave the group a business with steady cash flows and international reach. Under the family's ownership Cementir expanded abroad with plants and operations in Scandinavia, Turkey, Egypt, Asia and the United States, and became a specialist in white cement, a premium product used in architecture and design.
Caltagirone also moved into media. In the 1990s he bought Il Messaggero, Rome's leading daily newspaper, and later added titles such as Il Mattino of Naples and the free paper Leggo, grouped in Caltagirone Editore. The third pillar of his fortune is a portfolio of shareholdings in Italian banks and insurers. Using cash generated by cement and construction, he became one of the most significant private investors in Italy's financial sector, and his stakes have given him influence over some of the country's largest institutions.
Companies and holdings
The group's main businesses and investments include:
- Cementir Holding, a listed cement and concrete producer controlled by the family
- Vianini Lavori, a construction company focused on large infrastructure works
- Caltagirone Editore, publisher of Il Messaggero, Il Mattino and other titles
- real estate developments, mainly in and around Rome
- a significant shareholding in the insurer Assicurazioni Generali
- stakes in banks, including Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Mediobanca
His investment in Generali has made him one of its key private shareholders. He also held a long standing position in the Rome utility Acea. The pattern is consistent: a family controlled industrial core that funds minority but influential stakes in finance.
Because several of these companies are listed, the group's value moves with the Milan stock market, while the private real estate and construction activities add assets that are harder to value from outside. Cementir in particular has become the largest industrial engine of the group, and its expansion abroad means a growing share of its sales now comes from outside Italy.
Early life and career
Caltagirone was born in Rome in March 1943. He trained as an engineer, a natural choice for the heir to a construction business, and joined the family company as a young man. The Caltagirone name was well known in Roman building circles, and a related branch of the family ran its own construction group, whose difficulties in the early 1980s were widely reported. Francesco Gaetano's businesses were separate and continued to grow during that period.
Through the 1970s and 1980s he consolidated his position as one of Rome's main builders before diversifying. His step into cement in the early 1990s and into newspapers later in the decade marked the shift from a contractor to an industrial and financial investor. In later years his children, including his sons who serve in management and on the boards of group companies, have taken on more of the day to day leadership, while he remains the controlling shareholder.
Philanthropy and public life
Caltagirone keeps a relatively private profile for someone with his level of influence, and his charitable giving is not widely publicised. Much of his public presence comes through business: his newspapers are prominent voices in Rome and the south of Italy, and his votes as a shareholder in banks and insurers are closely followed by markets.
He has been at the centre of several high profile governance disputes. In 2022 he resigned as vice chairman of Generali and backed an alternative list of board candidates against the slate supported by Mediobanca, an unusual open contest in Italian finance that his side did not win. In the following years he remained active in debates over consolidation among Italian banks and insurers. His daughter Azzurra has also been involved in the family's business interests.