Salotto buono: The perfect storm

What has gone wrong with Italy’s «salotto buono»? The so-called «good drawing room» – the name given to a coterie of blue-blooded industrialists and investors – used to control the strategic heights of Italian finance. Now, however, key power nodes such as banks and RCS, publisher of Italy’s Corriere della Sera, are under siege by newcomers. The problem is that salotto is caught in a sort of perfect storm – a coming together of different ill winds – that threatens to blow out of control. First...