Silvio Berlusconi (born 29 September 1936) is an Italian politician, entrepreneur, real estate and insurance tycoon, bank and media proprietor and sports team owner. He is the second longest-serving Prime Minister of the Italian Republic (President of the Council of Ministers of Italy), a position he has held on three separate occasions: from 1994 to 1995, from 2001 to 2006 and currently since 2008. He is the leader of the People of Freedom political movement, a center-right party he founded in 2009, merging Forza Italia, his own party, with Alleanza Nazionale of Gianfranco Fini. His party’s victory in the 2008 general elections paved the way for a third mandate in office. As of January 2009, he is the senior G8 leader, the longest-serving current leader of a G8 country.

Berlusconi is the founder and major shareholder of Fininvest, one of the country’s ten largest privately owned companies, which currently operates in media and finance. Its portfolio includes three (out of seven) national analogue television channels, various digital television channels, as well as some of the larger-circulation news magazines. Together these account for nearly half the Italian market. He is the owner of the Italian football club A.C. Milan. Under his lead, the club has won a number of national and international trophies. With Ennio Doris he founded Mediolanum SpA, one of Italy’s biggest banking and insurance groups. Berlusconi, together with the Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, is the main shareholder of Mediaset, a publicly traded company. According to Forbes magazine, Berlusconi is Italy’s third richest person, with personal assets worth $9.4 billion (USD) in 2008, preceded only by Michele Ferrero and Leonardo del Vecchio.

Berlusconi’s political rise was rapid and surrounded by controversy. He was elected as a Member of Parliament for the first time and appointed as Prime Minister following the March 1994 snap parliamentary elections, when Forza Italia gained a relative majority a mere three months after having been officially launched. However, his cabinet collapsed after seven months, due to internal disagreements in his coalition. In the April 1996 snap parliamentary elections, Berlusconi ran for Prime Minister again but was defeated by centre-left candidate Romano Prodi. In the May 2001 parliamentary elections, he was again the right candidate for Prime Minister and won against the centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli. Berlusconi then formed his second and third governments, until 2006.

Berlusconi was leader of the right coalition in the April 2006 parliamentary elections, which he lost by a very narrow margin, his opponent again being Romano Prodi. Less than two years since his 2006 resignation he was re-elected in the snap parliamentary elections of April 2008 and sworn in again as prime minister on 8 May 2008 after the collapse, on 24 January 2008, of Romano Prodi’s last government.

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