Berlusconi's death opens power struggle over €5B media empire and Italian politics

Silvio Berlusconi died at 86, and within hours the machinery of succession began to turn. His funeral would be held Wednesday at Milan's cathedral—the city where he had risen from a cruise ship singer to become Italy's longest-serving postwar prime minister. But before the service, the markets were already moving. Shares in MediaForEurope, the broadcasting company that formed the spine of his empire, jumped 11 percent on the day of his death, driven by investor speculation about what would happen next. The question animating traders and analysts across Europe was straightforward: what becomes of a €5 billion business empire when the man who built it is gone?

Berlusconi had constructed his fortune across three decades, beginning with real estate development in postwar Milan and expanding into broadcasting, publishing, banking, and football. The empire included Italy's largest commercial television network, the country's biggest publishing house—Arnoldo Mondadori Editore—and a minority stake in Banca Mediolanum. At its core sat MediaForEurope, formerly known as Mediaset, which had been the first genuinely private player in Italian television and had made Berlusconi a household name as the nation's first modern media mogul. His personal wealth was estimated at $7.6 billion.

Now five children from two marriages would inherit this sprawling constellation of assets, and nobody knew whether they would hold it together or tear it apart. Fabio Caldato, an analyst at Olmpia Wealth Management, captured the uncertainty plainly: Berlusconi had a vision for his companies, but his heirs might not share it. The market was betting on a restructuring of MediaForEurope's ownership, and Caldato agreed that was likely. The family holding company, Fininvest, had issued a statement of intent suggesting continuity—that Berlusconi's "creative force" and "business genius" would remain the foundation of all future activities. But such language, issued in the immediate aftermath of death, often masks the messier reality of succession disputes.

The corporate landscape was already complex before his passing. Vivendi, the French media conglomerate controlled by Vincent Bollore, held more than 22 percent of Mediaset through various holdings, making it the largest shareholder after Berlusconi's family. This stake had been a source of tension for years. In late 2016, Vivendi had attempted a hostile takeover, prompting Mediaset to pivot toward building a pan-European television alliance to grow beyond Italy's borders. MediaForEurope now held a 40 percent stake in El Towers, a radio and television transmission tower company, and had long eyed a merger with the state-owned Rai Way. But in 2015, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had vetoed that deal on national security grounds, arguing that broadcast infrastructure was too strategically important to consolidate.

The succession battle would unfold against a backdrop of political opportunity for Giorgia Meloni, the current prime minister who had once worked under Berlusconi's command. His death created a vacuum in Italy's center-right coalition at a moment when Meloni was positioned to fill it. The Forza Italia party, which Berlusconi had founded in 1994 and led ever since, was already fracturing. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, long the official number two, was competing for control against Marta Fascina, a 33-year-old parliamentarian and Berlusconi's longtime partner. If that internal conflict deepened, it could splinter the party's 8 percent vote share from the 2022 elections—votes that Meloni could potentially absorb, reducing her dependence on Matteo Salvini's Liga party.

But the political reckoning extended beyond party management. Berlusconi had come to power in the 1990s promising that his unmatched business acumen would unleash a free-market revolution and make Italy prosper. His first term, in 1994-95, had occurred when Italy could still compete with Britain and France as one of the Group of Seven's largest economies. That competitive advantage had evaporated during his tenure and the three decades that followed. Italy had settled into chronic economic stagnation—a structural weakness that no successor, including Meloni, had yet managed to reverse. Whoever won the succession battles ahead, whether over Berlusconi's media empire or his political party, would inherit not just assets and influence but also the unresolved challenge of an economy that had stopped growing.