Mario Draghi

Mario Draghi (born 3 September 1947) is an Italian economist, academic, banker, and civil servant who served as the prime minister of Italy from February 2021 to October 2022.

Mario Draghi was born in Rome in 1947 to an upper-class family; his father Carlo, who was born in Padua, first joined the Bank of Italy in 1922, and later worked for the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI) and for the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro; while his mother, Gilda Mancini, who was born in Monteverde, Campania, near Avellino, was a pharmacist.

He is the eldest of three children including Andreina, an art historian, and Marcello, an entrepreneur.

When he was 15 years old, his father died; at 19, his mother died.

Draghi studied at the Massimiliano Massimo Institute, a Jesuit school in Rome, where he was a classmate of the future chairman of Ferrari, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the future prefect and civil servant Gianni De Gennaro and the future television presenter Giancarlo Magalli.

In 1970, he graduated with honours in economics at the Sapienza University of Rome, under the supervision of Keynesian economist Federico Caffè; his graduation dissertation was titled "Economic integration and the variation of exchange rates".

In his dissertation, Draghi was particularly critical of Luxembourg Prime Minister Pierre Werner's remarks that European monetary union was "premature".

From 1975 to 1981, Draghi was first professor of economic and financial policy at the University of Trento, then of macroeconomics at the University of Padua, and later of mathematical economics at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

Draghi went on to earn a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, this time with a dissertation titled "Essays on economic theory and applications", under the supervision of Franco Modigliani and Robert Solow.

After a lengthy career as an academic economist in Italy, Draghi worked for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., throughout the 1980s, and in 1991 returned to Rome to become Director General of the Italian Treasury.

In 1981, he was appointed professor of economic and monetary policy at the University of Florence a position that he held until 1994.

During this time, he also spent time as executive director of the World Bank in Washington, D.C. In 1983, Draghi was also appointed a counsellor to then-Minister of Treasury Giovanni Goria.

Draghi was also among the main proponents of the privatisations of many state-owned companies which occurred in the Italian economy through the 1990s.

He also chaired the management committee of SACE, implementing a complete reformation of the group and managing the transition from the Mani Pulite corruption scandal.

In 1991, Minister of Treasury Guido Carli and Bank of Italy Governor Carlo Azeglio Ciampi appointed Draghi as director general of the Italian Treasury; Draghi held this senior position in the civil service until 2001.

During his time at the Treasury, he chaired the committee that revised Italian corporate and financial legislation, and drafted the law that continues to govern Italian financial markets.

Draghi returned to chair SACE between 1998 and 2001, before the subsequent privatisation.

During these years, he was also a board member of several Italian banks and corporations, like Eni, Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and Istituto Mobiliare Italiano.

In 2001, he left the Treasury to become a fellow of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He left that role after a decade to join Goldman Sachs, where he remained until his appointment as Governor of the Bank of Italy in 2006.

His tenure as Governor coincided with the 2008 Great Recession, and in the midst of this he was selected to become the first Chair of the Financial Stability Board, the global standard-setter that replaced the Financial Stability Forum.

Draghi was also Chair of the Financial Stability Board between 2009 and 2011, and Governor of the Bank of Italy between 2006 and 2011.

Prior to his appointment as prime minister, he served as President of the European Central Bank (ECB) between 2011 and 2019.

He left those roles after his nomination by the European Council in 2011 to serve as President of the ECB.

He presided over the institution during the Eurozone crisis, becoming famous throughout Europe for saying that he would be prepared to do "whatever it takes" to prevent the euro from failing.

In 2014, Draghi was listed by Forbes as the eighth-most powerful person in the world.

In 2015, Fortune magazine ranked him as the world's "second greatest leader".

He is also the only Italian to be listed three times in the Time 100 annual listicle.

In 2019, Paul Krugman described him as "the greatest central banker of modern times."

Moreover, thanks to his monetary policies, he is widely considered the "saviour of the euro" during the European debt crisis.

He has been nicknamed Super Mario by some media, a nickname that was popularised during his time as President of the ECB, when he was credited by numerous sources as having played a key role in combatting the Eurozone crisis.

After Draghi's term as ECB President ended in 2019, he initially returned to private life.

On 3 February 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, Draghi was invited by President Sergio Mattarella to form a government of national unity (Draghi Cabinet), following the resignation of Giuseppe Conte.

After successful negotiations with parties including the League (Lega), the Five Star Movement (M5S), the Democratic Party (PD), and Forza Italia (FI), Draghi was sworn in as prime minister on 11 February, pledging to oversee effective implementation of COVID-19 economic stimulus.

Draghi has been rated highly in public opinion polls in Italy during his time as prime minister; at the end of his first year in office Politico Europe ranked him as the most powerful person in Europe and The Economist named Italy as "Country of the Year", singling out Draghi's leadership as central to its nomination.

On 14 July 2022, the M5S revoked support to Draghi's coalition government regarding a decree concerning economic stimulus to offset the energy crisis.

On the same day, despite having largely won the confidence vote, Draghi announced his resignation as prime minister, which was rejected by President Mattarella.

On 21 July, Draghi resigned for a second time following the failure of the confidence vote to pass with an absolute majority due to the withdrawals of M5S, Lega, and FI.

On the same day, President Mattarella accepted the resignation and Draghi remained in office as caretaker prime minister.

He was succeeded by Giorgia Meloni on 22 October 2022.