Banker's body reburied in Italy

Cuccia died last June aged 92

MILAN, Italy -- The body of banker Enrico Cuccia has been re-buried after being snatched in a ransom attempt three weeks ago.

The reinternment in a family crypt came days after police arrested a steelworker in Turin and later found the body in a barn outside the city.

The episode, in which a ransom of six million Swiss francs ($3.47 million) was demanded for the body, shocked Italy.

Family and friends attended the brief ceremony in the northern town of Meina in the northern town of Meina on Wednesday.

Cuccia, hailed as the father of Italian capitalism, died last June at the age of 92, after a career pulling strings at many of Italy's top private companies from the leading investment bank Mediobanca.

Once Italy's only merchant bank, Mediobanca was the key player in almost every major deal in Italian corporate finance from the late 1940s onwards.

At Cuccia's death seven-times Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti said: "At times, he was more important that the government."

Forced off Mediobanca's board in 1982 when he reached retirement age, Cuccia stayed on as honorary chairman and continued to work on deals even as he neared 90.

In 1999, when many observers thought Mediobanca was slipping into decline, it engineered what was then the biggest hostile takeover in Europe, Olivetti's raid of Telecom Italia.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Stolen coffin found in Turin
April 1, 2001
Thieves demand ransom for body
March 23, 2001
Italian banker's body snatched
March 18, 2001

Mediobanca

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