) is an Italian telecoms entrepreneur. He spent his childhood and youth in Novara, Italy. He and a group of other managers founded Italian telecommunications company Fastweb S.p.A and the web platform Babelgum

Babelgum

Babelgum is a free to view Internet television platform supported by advertising. The project was set up in 2005 by Italian media and telecommunications entrepreneur Silvio Scaglia and scientist Erik Lumer, with the aim of developing interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms...

. In 2007, Mr. Scaglia set up an investment firm, Pacific Capital, active both in public and private equity investment opportunities on a global scale. Scaglia was previously the majority shareholder

Shareholder

A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or institution that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a public or private corporation. Shareholders own the stock, but not the corporation itself ....

 of Fastweb S.p.A.

Fastweb

FASTWEB S.p.A. is an Italian broadband telecommunications company. It provides voice, Internet, cable television, IPTV and FTTH connection. The cable television and IPTV services were developed by Fastweb themselves as the technology market in 2000 was not mature enough to offer the level of...

 until April 9, 2007 when he sold his 18.75% share in the company to Swisscom

Swisscom

Swisscom AG is a major telecommunications provider in Switzerland. Along with Swiss Post, it is a successor company to the former state-owned PTT. Its headquarters are located at Worblaufen near Bern...

, which had launched a takeover bid of the company at 47 euros per share. The Swiss TLC company eventually bought 82.1% of Fastweb for a total of 3.1 billion euros.

Forbes

Forbes

Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

 estimates Scaglia’s wealth at 1 billion USD in 2010, making him the thirteenth richest man in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 (the last in the list of Italian billionaires) and the 937th richest man in the world.

Early Career

After graduating in Electronic Engineering

Electronic engineering

Electronics engineering, also referred to as electronic engineering, is an engineering discipline where non-linear and active electrical components such as electron tubes, and semiconductor devices, especially transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, are utilized to design electronic...

 from the Polytechnic University of Turin

Polytechnic University of Turin

The Polytechnic University of Turin is an engineering university based in Turin, northern Italy. Established in 1859, Politecnico di Torino is Italy’s oldest Technical University. In 2011 it was ranked as the best engineering university in Italy in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.It is...

, specialising in telecommunications and computer science, Scaglia began working at Aeritalia Spazio where, for six months, he worked on the Teleret satellite project. He then applied to Arthur Andersen

Arthur Andersen

Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms among PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young and KPMG, providing auditing, tax, and consulting services to large corporations...

 Management Consulting, where he worked for 3 years, before moving to McKinsey & Co., where he was a consultant. There, he joined Gianfilippo Cuneo's team, and in 1989 he followed Cuneo to the McKinsey spin-off, Bain & Cuneo Associati, where he worked on the automotive sector, notably for Piaggio

Piaggio

Piaggio based in Pontedera, Italy encompasses seven brands of scooters, motorcycles and compact commercial vehicles. As the fourth largest producer of scooters and motorcycles in the world, Piaggio produces more than 600,000 vehicles annually, with five research and development centers, more than...

. In 1991, he entered the Piaggio group directly, to become General Manager of Motovespa, the group's Spanish subsidiary in Madrid. He subsequently became Senior Vice President, with specific tasks relating to business in China, India, Indonesia and South America.

Omnitel

Prior to founding FASTWEB, Scaglia was CEO of Omnitel, which later became Vodafone Italia

Vodafone Italy

Vodafone Italia is an Italian mobile telephony operator. The company has 31,000,000 customers and a market share of 33.4%, placing it just behind TIM...

. Vodafone is the second largest wireless telecommunications company in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. According to an article in Italian newspaper Il Foglio, Scaglia's nickname at the company was Il Mago or "The Magician", because he managed to swell subscriber numbers from 300,000 to 8 million over a short period.

Fastweb

After leaving the job of CEO of Omnitel, in September 1999 Scaglia founded e.Biscom, the holding company of other companies including Fastweb

Fastweb

FASTWEB S.p.A. is an Italian broadband telecommunications company. It provides voice, Internet, cable television, IPTV and FTTH connection. The cable television and IPTV services were developed by Fastweb themselves as the technology market in 2000 was not mature enough to offer the level of...

, which supplies telecommunications services. He has said "[I] invested all my money - to the last penny - and all my credibility" in Fastweb.
On March 30 2000 e.Biscom was floated on the Italian stock exchange, with the aim of raising equity and expanding its fibre optic network to Italy's main cities. Fastweb began making investments with the funds raised from its stock exchange flotation.
The company invested approximately Euro 4 billion in creating "the first fully IP optical-based access and backbone network in the world". The company was one of the first in the world to create a large-scale "triple-play"

Triple play (telecommunications)

In telecommunications, triple play service is a marketing term for the provisioning of two bandwidth-intensive services, high-speed Internet access and television, and a less bandwidth-demanding service, telephone, over a single broadband connection. Triple play focuses on a combined business...

 integrated IP network, for fixed telephony, high-speed internet and TV. It is also Italy's second-largest fixed-line phone operator after Telecom Italia.

Babelgum

In 2005 Scaglia founded Babelgum

Babelgum

Babelgum is a free to view Internet television platform supported by advertising. The project was set up in 2005 by Italian media and telecommunications entrepreneur Silvio Scaglia and scientist Erik Lumer, with the aim of developing interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms...

, a web-tv platform that is based on P2P technology

Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

. He set up the venture without carrying out market research, saying "this is built on gut feeling...and is a natural extension of my Fastweb experience." Scaglia has so far invested 50 million euros in Babelgum, and expects the venture to break even by the end of the decade. The platform is free for its users and operates a revenue sharing

Revenue sharing

Revenue sharing has multiple, related meanings depending on context.In business, revenue sharing refers to the sharing of profits and losses among different groups. One form shares between the general partner and limited partners in a limited partnership...

 system.

Scaglia has been described as "as close as Italy gets to a full-fledged multicompany Internet entrepreneur" due to his talent for successful start-ups; and a "technology maverick", credited with providing the "drive" to boost Italy's fibre optic

Optical fiber

An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...

networks and indeed lead the Italian fibre optic network market, according to a 2003 article on Time.com.

Guardia di Finanza

On February 23, 2010, Scaglia was among 56 people for whom warrants were issued by Italian prosecutors looking into suspicious telcoms contracts and purported 2003 - 2006 tax evasion.

On February 26, 2010, shortly after midnight, Silvio Scaglia turned himself in to police after flying from the Caribbean to face allegations concerning a money-laundering ring. Mr. Scaglia, who has denied any wrongdoing, spent the night in jail and was questioned on March 2.