Mario Monti

Early life

Mario Monti was born in Varese on 19 March 1943. His mother was from Piacenza. Although his father grew up in Varese, he was born in Luján in the Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, where his grandfather Abramo had emigrated to from Italy in the 19th century and built up a soft-drink and beer-production business. Monti's father went back to Argentina during World War II but later returned to his family home in Varese.

Monti studied at the private Leo XIII High School and attended Bocconi University of Milan, where he obtained a degree in economics in 1965. Later, he won a scholarship to Yale University, where he studied under James Tobin, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Academic career

Monti began his academic career at the University of Trento, before moving to teach economics at the University of Turin from 1970 to 1985, and finally to Bocconi University, where he was appointed Rector in 1989 and President in 1994. He also served as President of the SUERF (The European Money and Finance Forum) from 1982 to 1985. His research helped to create the "Klein-Monti model", aimed at describing the behaviour of banks operating under monopoly circumstances.

Since 1970, Monti has been married to Elsa Antonioli (born 1944), an Italian Red Cross volunteer, with whom he has two children, Federica and Giovanni.

Known for his reserved character, Monti acknowledges not being especially sociable. He said that his youth was given over to hard study; spare-time activities included cycling and keeping up with world affairs by tuning into foreign short-wave radio stations.

In addition to his native Italian, Monti also speaks English.

Lifetime Senator

On 9 November 2011, Monti was appointed a Lifetime Senator by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, in accordance with the second paragraph of "Article 59 of the Constitution, which merits national honour distinguished in science and society". He was a member of the Commission for Industry, Commerce and Tourism from 30 November 2011 to 14 March 2013 in the sixteenth legislature. Monti was a member of the independents' mixed parliamentary group until 19 March 2013, when he joined the Civic Choice (SC) parliamentary group, becoming the first lifetime senator aligned with a party group. On 7 May 2013, he became a member of the Commission for Foreign Affairs and Emigration.

President of Civic Choice

On 4 January 2013, Monti launched Civic Choice as an electoral list of civil society, to realize the implementation of his agenda in a future government. SC was announced as part of the With Monti for Italy (CMI) centrist coalition, alongside Union of the Centre (UdC) and Future and Freedom (FLI). In the 2013 general election, the party obtained 8.3% of the vote, 37 deputies (on its own lists) and 15 senators (within CMI). On 12 March 2013, Civic Choice was turned into a political party as Monti took office as acting SC president in the Provisional Committee of the party and appointed senator Andrea Olivero as provisional political coordinator. On 16 May 2013, Mario Monti was unanimously elected president of the Civic Choice.

On 17 October 2013, he resigned and was replaced by his deputy Alberto Bombassei as acting president. Monti cited his disagreement with 12 senators (out of 20), including Mario Mauro, Andrea Olivero, Gabriele Albertini, Pier Ferdinando Casini (UdC leader), Maria Paola Merloni, Luigi Marino and Lucio Romano. Particularly, Monti criticized Mauro's line of unconditioned support to the government and of transforming SC into a larger centre-right political party, open to The People of Freedom.