Berlusconi’s Mediaset suffers election plunge

ROME – Investors looked anxiously on after Italy’s elections, but it was the Berlusconi family’s Mediaset that suffered the biggest fall the day following the election, with the company registering a five percent fall in price.

 Uncertainty over the shape of the next Italian government led to a slight fall in the Milan stock exchange of around half a percent.

 However, companies in the Berlusconi family, including Mediaset and Mondadori, fell steeply in value on Monday following the triumph of the populist Five Star Movement in the south and the eclipsing of Forza Italia on the right by the Northern League.

 Mediaset fell 5.5 percent whilst Mondadori, majority owned by the Berlusconi family’s Fininvest, suffered a 4.5 percent loss.

 It follows a pattern of steady decline in the value of Mediaset over the course of the year, with eight percent being wiped off the company’s value since the beginning of the year according to Italy’s financial daily Il Sole.  

 As of yet, Berlusconi is the only political leader not to hold a press conference following the result of elections that essentially ceded control of the right to the League’s leader, Matteo Salvini. Many speculate that Forza Italia’s weak showing at the elections could spell the end of the 81-year-old leader’s time in Italian politics.

 A note was released by the aging Cavaliere on Monday stating that he had congratulated Salvini and hoping that “the centre-right will be given the mandate” to form a government.

tw