MILAN. Ennio Doris, founder of Banca Mediolanum, died. He was 81 years old. The banker passed away at 2:12 this night. The announcement was made by his wife Lina Tombolato and their children Sara and Massimo, who “in these days of mourning” want to “maintain strict confidentiality”, whom they ask everyone to “want to respect”. The employees and collaborators of the group, we read in a note, “gather together and participate around the Doris family and, with enormous emotion, pay homage to Ennio Doris, a great man and extraordinary entrepreneur”. Shortly after the news broke, Silvio Berlusconi entrusted his friend’s memory to social media: «A great man, a great entrepreneur, a great patriot, a great Italian. A generous, selfless man, always attentive to others, always close to those in need. A great friend of mine. We will miss him very much, I will miss him very much. To Massimo, Sara, Lina my closeness and all my affection ».
Ennio Doris was born in Tombolo on July 3, 1940. For over forty years he was the undisputed protagonist of the great Italian finance as well as an entrepreneur, banker and founder of Banca Mediolanum, one of the most important companies on the national banking scene also present in Spain, Germany and Ireland. Married since 1966 to Lina Tombolato, he leaves two children – Massimo and Sara – and seven grandchildren: Agnese, Alberto, Anna, Aqua, Davide, Luna Chiara and Sara Viola. In 1992 he was awarded the honor of Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and in 2002 that of Cavaliere del Lavoro. Also in 2002 he obtained the Master honoris causa in ” Banking and Finance ” from the Cuoa Foundation. From 2000 to 2012 he held the position of director in Mediobanca SpA and Banca Esperia SpA From 1996 he was CEO of Mediolanum SpA, the holding company of the group, until 2015, the year of the merger by incorporation into Banca Mediolanum. Until last November 3, 2021, Ennio Doris held the office of chairman of Banca Mediolanum, the day on which he was appointed honorary chairman following a resolution of the shareholders’ meeting. Ennio Doris also held the position of Honorary President of the Mediolanum Onlus Foundation.
As a child Ennio Doris dreams of becoming a livestock broker like his father, but at the age of 10 he fell ill with nephritis and thus concentrated on his studies. After graduating in accounting from the Jacopo Riccati high school (Treviso), he began his career at the Banca Antoniana of Padua in the branch of San Martino di Lupari (Padua) where he worked from 1960 to 1968, to then become general manager of the mechanical workshops. Talin from Cittadella (Padua) together with the industrialist Dino Marchiorello, a key figure in the life of Ennio Doris. Indeed, an episode lived with Marchiorello will constitute a real turning point in Ennio Doris’s life: aboard the brand new Citroen Pallas of the industrialist, Ennio Doris discovers that «… his feet sink on a very soft and enveloping carpet “. Getting into that car was an enlightenment, in a moment it was all clear to him. That man was driving the car of his dreams, he would later say: that man was “driving” his life. From there Ennio Doris realizes that, to guide his life, he must choose to become an entrepreneur. He sees his friend Gianfranco Cassol as a promoter and so in 1969 he too began his activity in the field of financial consultancy at Fideuram, dealing with the management of household savings and, from 1971 to 1981, in Dival (Ras Group), where started with a small group of collaborators, in a few years he managed over 700 professionals.
During those first important years of experience there are countless encounters with clients who entrust him with their “money that comes from sweat and sacrifice” as Ennio Doris himself recalls. In particular, the meeting and the dialogue one evening with a carpenter who chooses to invest a more than considerable sum is decisive: 10 million lire about forty years ago. “Mr. Doris, do you know what I gave you?” the carpenter asks me “Yes, 10 million”, I answer. “No, you are wrong,” he tells me. He shows me the impressive calluses of his right hand and adds: «I gave you these! And remember that I can’t afford to get sick, because otherwise my family won’t go on. ” That meeting marked his professional life forever. “There I understood what I had to do: be successful not because I’m good at selling something, but because I’m useful to people. To do this, however, I must have all the necessary tools available, including banking ones “, to carry out that entrepreneurial project capable of offering customers answers to all people’s financial needs.
Thus, in February 1982, after the meeting in Portofino with Silvio Berlusconi and with the entrepreneurial and logistic support of the Fininvest Group, Ennio Doris founded Programma Italia, the first network of global consultants in the savings sector, with an idea as simple as powerful and innovative: «To become the reference point of the Italian family for savings». In this way he invented a new way of banking, bringing finance closer to people and creating an industrial model that was a precursor of the times.