Today is a very important day. Just 7 hours ago in the Orazi and Curiazi ballroom of the Campidoglio in Rome the 25 head of states and governments of the countries member of the European Union signed the first European Constitution.
The historic event, in the same ballroom, designed by Michaelangelo, where in March 1957 the EU’s six founding nations signed the original Treaty of Rome will give the union a sharper international profile and speed up decision-making.
I believe that all the members of GEI wish to join me in toasting to the future success of the European Union.
Alessandro Benetton, age 40, is Chairman and founder of 21 Investimenti Group, a former merchant bank established in 1993 and now a private equity Group which operates in Italy and France.
He is a member of the Executive Committee and of the Board of Directors of Benetton Group S.p.A., member of the Board of Directors of Edizione Holding S.p.a., Autogrill S.p.a., Sirti S.p.a., Permasteelisa S.p.a. and Fondazione Rosselli (the economic research institute based in Turin -Italy).
Furthermore he is also member of the advisory committee of Robert Bosch International Betaili/gungen AGHE in Zurich.
Between 1988 and 1998 he was appointed Chairman of Benetton Formula 1.
Alessandro Benetton has a Bachelor of Science, cum laude, from Boston University.
After a working experience as an analyst at Goldman Sachs he received a Master in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.
Recently Mr. Benetton joined the “Task Force” -created by the chairman of the Confindustria, Luca di Montezemolo,- to promote the Made in Italy and the its internationalization.
Mr. Benetton has been very active in this field that is of particular interest to all of us at GEI.
Unfortunately we see, almost every day, several useless events organized in this country by a myriad of different Italian organizations with a great waste ot time and resources.
All this is not helping the promotion of Italy as a country and does not improve our image abroad
We do hope, indeed, that Mr. Benetton and this new task force can give a contribution in solving this problem.