Authors: Rupert Cornwell
And there were other, even more tangible connections with the
Church hierarchy of Lombardy. This century two of Milan's archbishops have become Pope. One was Achille Ratti, who took the
name of Pius XI when he ascended St Peter's Throne in 1922. He was
to sign the Concordat on the Vatican's behalf in 1929, and his
nephew, Franco Ratti, was later to become a chairman of Banco
Ambrosiano. The other was Giovanni Battista Montini, better
known as Paul VI. His family, furthermore, still retains ties with
Banca San Paolo di Brescia, so intimately concerned with both the
foundation and re-foundation of Ambrosiano itself.
From the first, the new bank pursued its goal of "serving moral
organizations, pious works, and religious bodies set up for charitable
aims". A shareholder from start to finish was, for example, the
Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, the corporation responsible for the
building and upkeep of Milan Cathedral, that Gothic extravagance
with 135 separate spires, emblem of the bourgeois mercantile confidence of the city. Today, from the room on Ambrosiano's fourth
floor which once was Calvi's office, you can look through the bulletproof glass window, across a terrace to the Cathedral's central spire,
topped with its copper-gilt painted statue of the
Madonnina,
the
traditional protectress of Milan. When disaster struck in 1982, the
Fabbrica del Duomo possessed over 180,000 shares in Ambrosiano,
worth 4.7 billion lire on the basis of the bank's last-ever stockmarket
quotation, but subsequently all but valueless. Thirteen other organizations were listed as shareholders, including orphanages, missions
and old people's homes, all run by the Church.
Not surprisingly, Ambrosiano became known as the "priests'
bank". And in a quiet, conservative fashion it prospered, attracting
as its customers the solid, righteous citizens of Milan. Often the
depositors and borrowers would become shareholders too, creating
that extraordinary trust in the bank which lasted until the end.
Gradually Ambrosiano extended outward into the rich Milanese
hinterland, and further into Lombardy. It became part of the fabric of
the city, cautious, of impeccable reputation, but creating hardly a
ripple in the world beyond. Not until 1937 did the bank open a branch
in Rome, and for all its life it remained quintessentially Milanese,
enmeshed with the city's aristocracy. Franco Ratti was a count and
Tommaso Gallarati Scotti, chairman between 1953 and 1965, was a
duke. Such a proliferation of titles must have weighed upon the mind
of the young Roberto Calvi, as he embarked upon his own career at
Ambrosiano in 1947.
Roberto Calvi came from what today would be called a normal white
collar background. He was born in Milan on April 13 1920, the son of
an employee in the legal department of Banca Commerciale. But
his origins were partly from the Valtellina, a long Alpine valley just
south of the Swiss border. There was something of the dour cunning
of the mountain man in Calvi's own character. With little doubt the
young Calvi saw from early on his future in banking or finance. After
studying book-keeping, he enrolled in 1939 at the prestigious Bocconi
university of Milan, in the faculty of economics and commerce.
Friends at that time remember him as an assiduous student, but
little more. His only extra-curricular activity seems to have been
helping with the review published by the University's Fascist association.
But war prevented him from taking a degree, something which
probably contributed to his later lack of self-confidence. In 1940
Mussolini brought Italy into the fighting, and by the summer of 1941
was promising Hitler the despatch of Italian soldiers to join the
Germans on the Russian front. At the age of 22 Calvi enlisted. He
chose, however, not the most popular Fascist destination of the Air
Force, but the Novara lancers, the cavalry regiment with a traditionally aristocratic flavour. After a three month crash training
course, Calvi that autumn left Verona as a second lieutenant on the
long train journey for Russia.
The young man was quick to show himself a most competent
soldier, thorough and dedicated. He was only just into his twenties,
"but he seemed like a man ten years older", a fellow officer who
encountered him at Verona would recall. Calvi was long in Russia
and performed well. During the appalling conditions of the withdrawal, when supply lines were non-existent and the cavalrymen
were forced to slaughter their horses to stay alive, Calvi earned
much gratitude. On one occasion, he later recounted, he managed to
trick some peasants out of horses of their own, by promising them
large sums of money which never materialized. Probably he helped in
this way to save Italian lives, but it was also an early example of
financial fraud. More generally, in his quiet yet forceful way, he was
displaying the self-control and resourcefulness in the face of adversity
which were to remain such prominent qualities until almost the end of
his life.
Long afterwards Calvi would talk at length about his Russian
experiences, as if to escape the harsh present reality for a simpler
past. In another small way, too, Russia left its mark. Calvi never
drank much, but one of his favourite spirits was iced vodka.
By 1944 he was back in Italy—and in that ingenious way of his, Calvi
was taking his precautions. Those were treacherous times, as the line
of liberation moved gradually northward. Calvi would afterwards
maintain that he went everywhere with two party membership cards.
One was of what remained of the Fascist party; the other was one of
the first issued by the Italian Socialist party as it regrouped after
Mussolini's downfall, it bore the number 43. You never knew who
you might run into.
Soon, though, the young ex-cavalryman had his first job. It was in
his father's bank, the Banca Commerciale. But instead of Milan,
Calvi joined its branch in the southern city of Bari. After a couple of
years he left. Some have since claimed that he was advised to go after
the discovery of an accounting irregularity, but there is no evidence to
support this suggestion. Rather, as an ambitious and determined
young man he seems to have decided that the prospects for rapid
advancement in the enormous and state-controlled Banca Commerciale were dim. Calvi returned to a Milan that was starting to rebuild
after the devastations of the war. Toscanini was back conducting at
La Scala after a self-imposed exile under Fascism, providing the most
vivid symbol of the city's desire for
a
fresh start.
Calvi's arrival at Banco Ambrosiano appears to have been fortuitous. The story goes that his father one day ran into Carlo
Alessandro Canesi, a senior manager at the bank, who was on the
lookout for promising young recruits. Roberto Calvi's name inevitably came up and he was quickly taken on. The support of Canesi,
who in 1965 was to succeed Duke Tommaso Gallarati Scotti as
Ambrosiano's chairman, was crucial to Calvi's rapid advancement
thereafter. As Canesi rose, so did Calvi in his wake. He served
variously in the foreign department, as Canesi's personal assistant,
and in the loans department.
The two men were in some respects opposites. Canesi was outgoing
and gregarious, with a profound feel for Milan and the Milanese.
"Crafty, but a gentleman, who ended up knowing everyone and their
secrets too", is how he has been described. Calvi, on the other hand,
was already showing the secretiveness and shyness which ever
marked him. But he was young,
a
hard worker, eager to learn and
bright—and in the Ambrosiano of those years such a combination of
qualities was uncommon.
Just how Calvi from his modest origins could have made his way to
the very pinnacle of Ambrosiano has often been asked. The answer is
probably simple—that he had precious few challengers. The bank
was unadventurous, content enough with its status as a prosperous
but middling Catholic institution; with few pretentions outside Milan,
let alone internationally. In that sense it was wide open for one with
Calvi's combination of ambition and discretion. Ambrosiano, moreover, was privately owned, belonging to but not dictated to by its
shareholders, and given to promotion from within. This removed the
risk of an appointee from outside, as might easily be the case,
particularly in a public sector bank. For Calvi, the wholehearted
backing of Canesi, clearly himself destined for the top, was in all
likelihood enough. That he was never a seriously practising Catholic
did not much matter.
Just when he began to conceive the projects that were to bring his
downfall is not clear. It was Canesi, though, who set about broadening Ambrosiano's horizon, and his protege needed no second bidding. In the mid-1950s Calvi had the then novel idea of Ambrosiano
underwriting an issue of bonds by the Marelli industrial group. A
little later he launched Inter Italia, the first Italian mutual fund. By
the early 1960s, Ambrosiano was stretching its ambitions further.
Canesi had become managing director, and the total of the bank's
branches had risen to over 50. More important, Ambrosiano had
made its first foreign acquisition, the Banca del Gottardo, just across
the border in Lugano, Switzerland. At around that time too the bank
joined an international consultancy arrangement with private banks
from six other West European countries. Within Italy Ambrosiano
and two other leading privately-owned banks, Banca Nazionale
dell'Agricoltura and Banca d'America e d'ltalia had set up a medium-
term credit institute called Interbanca.
More and more, his was the guiding hand in these deals, all of
which offer clues to his later design of creating a merchant bank or
French-style
banque d'affaires,
along the lines of Paribas or Suez,
which would not only take deposits but hold interests in industry and
finance as well. In the meantime the rising young executive had in
1952 married a slight, attractive girl called Clara Canetti, whom he
had met at the Adriatic resort of Rimini. The following year she bore
him a son, and in 1959 a daughter. Throughout his life Calvi was
devoted to his family; indeed, outside Ambrosiano they were almost
his only interest.
By the mid-1950s Italy's postwar "economic miracle" was in full
swing, and Milan was at its heart. Rome might be Italy's capital, but,
as was often said, the title belonged morally to Milan. With membership of the Common Market, the tide of Italian affairs was running
in favour of the North, by temperament and history closer to the
European mainstream, and more receptive to ideas and trends from
outside.