Silvio Scaglia

Silvio Scaglia (born October 14, in Lucerne, Switzerland ) is an Italian telecoms entrepreneur, the founder of Fastweb S.p.A. and Babelgum. He is also the founder and current Chairman of Pacific Global Management Group (PGM), the holding company that controls the Elite World international network of modeling agencies (Elite and Women Management, in New York and Paris) and the luxury Italian lingerie brand La Perla. He spent his childhood and youth in Novara, Italy. He is based in London where he lives with his family.

After graduating in 1983 with a degree in Electronic Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin, Scaglia began working at Aeritalia Spazio, where for a time he worked on the Teleret satellite project in partnership with NASA and Martin Marietta. Later, in response to a job advertisement, he applied to Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting, where he worked for three years, first as a programmer and then as a consultant. On the verge of pursuing a Master’s degree in the U.S., Scaglia instead accepted a position at McKinsey & Co., where he worked under Gianfilippo Cuneo for three years, ultimately following him to Bain & Company. There, among other roles, Scaglia was a consultant for Piaggio. At the start of the 1990s, he became logistics manager for Piaggio’s Spanish subsidiary, working alongside Giovanni Agnelli. Subsequently he became director of Piaggio’s foreign licensing partners, and founded Piaggio’s first industrial base in China in 1994 in Foshan with Agnelli.

In 1994, Omnitel Pronto Italia obtained a mobile telephone license that allowed it to compete with Telecom Italia Mobile.

In 1995, as he prepared to move to Singapore with his family, Scaglia received an offer to work for the Omnitel Pronto Italia “start-up,” which by then had become Telecom Italia’s top competitor in mobile phones; it is now known as Vodafone.

A few months later, in mid-1996 – after Francesco Caio left Omnitel, having been scouted by Franco De Benedetti to run Olivetti – Scaglia took over Caio’s role as chief executive officer of Omnitel, a position he held until 1999 (when Olivetti sold Omnitel, and Scaglia left the company to found Fastweb).

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