The president of the Italian group Fincantieri, the leading Italian shipbuilder, Claudio Graziano, who also commanded the United Nations force in Lebanon, died at the age of 70, according to the Italian authorities, with media reports suggesting suicide.
Mr. Graziano was appointed in May 2022 as president of Fincantieri, the leading European shipbuilder with 21,000 employees and a turnover of 7.7 billion euros.
“Today we mourn the loss not only of a great leader who dedicated his entire life to Italy but of a remarkable manager and a dear friend,” said the group’s general director, Pierroberto Folgiero, in a statement. .
A firearm was found near his body at his Roman home, as well as a farewell letter in which he spoke of the recent loss of his wife, according to the Ansa agency.
“One of the last challenges he had to face with courage was for his greatest love, his wife Marisa, supporting her during her illness before her sad passing just a year ago,” Mr. Folgiero added.
The head of government Giorgia Meloni praised in a press release “an honest servant of the State who throughout his life brought honor to the Nation, the Armed Forces and the institutions” while President Sergio Mattarella paid tribute to “a generous and loyal statesman”.
Born in 1953 in Turin (north), Claudio Graziano entered the army and trained with the Alpine hunters to whom he remained faithful throughout his military career.
Deployed to Mozambique with the Blue Helmets in 1992, he was military attaché at the Italian embassy in Washington just after the attacks of September 11, 2001, served in Afghanistan then was appointed in 2007 by the Secretary General of the United Nations as commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
From 2015 to 2018, he was head of the armed forces in Italy and from 2017 chaired the Military Committee of the European Union, until his arrival at Fincantieri, a few months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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“He was a valuable advisor at critical times for the security of the EU,” he said.
The action of the Fincantieri group, controlled by the Italian state, lost up to 3% on the Milan Stock Exchange after the announcement of its disappearance. It closed down 1.7%, to 5 euros.
After a long series and against a backdrop of industrial and capitalistic rivalry, France and Italy announced in 2021 the abandonment of a project to buy Chantiers de l’Atlantique (formerly STX France) by Fincantieri which would have made it possible to strengthen the construction of large cruise ships subject to Asian competition.
Rome and Paris had cited the health crisis which impacted global tourism but an alliance between Fincantieri and the Chinese CSCC for the construction of liners had also weighed unfavorably in the balance.
