Angelo Abbondio, historical stockbroker and pioneer of the savings industry in Italy, has passed away. He was 80 years old. Abbondio was the protagonist of the well-known Professional Fund, the investment fund managed by Sprind and launched in 1984 together with a group of ten stockbrokers including Ettore Fumagalli, Attilio Ventura and Renzo Zaffaroni.
The fund was then bought by the De Benedetti group.
Abbondio was born in Milan in 1942. His professional Fund has remained in the memory of the stock market insiders both for its performance and as one of the first initiatives in the mutual investment fund sector since, after Law 77 of 1983 which mutual funds established and regulated, it was the third fund to be launched after those of Imi and Ras.
“When we had studied the initiative – then told the chairman of the stockbrokers committee Ettore Fumagalli in the book” Affari in Piazza “by Fabio Tamburini – our break even point was around 18 billion in collections and it would have been enough for us to reach 30 billions. The goal was to have a client of our own, in which we could make our customers invest. Well, within a year we raised 1000 billion ”.
The founders’ decision to sell came when the Treasury forced them to choose between being managers and stockbrokers. Abbondio, who remained at the helm of the Professional Fund for a few years even with the transition to De Benedetti’s Cofide, signed a new financial initiative in the mid-1990s by creating Symphonia Sgr, based in Lugano. It also went into the news for the purchase, in 1986, of the famous painting “Fiumana” by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo: the work, which anticipates the Piedmontese artist’s “Quarto Stato” masterpiece, was bought at auction and donated years later. from Abbondio to the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.