Italy_s Matchmaker

Ruggiero Magnoni, the 48-year-old co-head of European corporate finance at Lehman Brothers Inc., has been preparing all his life for his current starring role in some of Europe_s most exciting financial theatrics. Born in Barcelona but bred in Milan, Magnoni got an MBA at Columbia University and in the mid- _70s joined the old Wall Street firm of Kuhn Loeb. During those years of political violence in Italy, New York seemed a good bet. Shortly after he signed on, Kuhn Loeb was snapped up by Lehman Brothers, and Magnoni rose to be head of international private placements. In the early 1980s, that meant Japan. Magnoni was soon taking the red-eye to Tokyo as often as once a week to help guide the flow of Japanese investment into U.S. real estate and equities. But by the mid-1980s, Europe was starting to stir. Lehman had become part of the American Express Co.-owned Shearson Lehman empire, and AmEx_ James D. Robinson III and Shearson_s Peter Cohen presciently chose Italy, with its backward business culture but high savings rate, as a place of potential. Magnoni took on Italian operations, based in Milan. Italy was soon booming, and Magnoni was cutting deals with magnates such as Carlo De Benedetti, in whose varied businesses Shearson ultimately invested more than $100 million. Magnoni is one of the only people in the world to have worked with both De Benedetti and his bitter political and business rival, media mogul-turned-politician Silvio Berlusconi. In 1995, Magnoni structured the $1 billion deal that allowed Berlusconi to take his media group Mediaset public, a move that smoothed the magnate_s push into politics.