MILAN (ITALPRESS) – “The Sella Group expresses its deep sadness that Maurizio Sella passed away last night due to a sudden and rapidly worsening illness”. Here’s what we read in the notes.
Maurizio Sella, 83 years old, Cavaliere del Lavoro, worked for almost sixty years in the family business, guiding it towards solid and lasting growth and committed to serving institutions and organizations representing the banking sector and the business world, in Italy and Europe, the record explains.
“Until the last moment, even in these days of physical suffering, he dedicated every moment to work for the company and for the family. Today – said CEO Pietro Sella, also on behalf of his family, the Board of Directors and colleagues of all the companies of the group – he leaves us people to whom we owe the success of the Group in which we worked and a great example of dedication, wisdom, foresight and entrepreneurship. In practice, he has been preparing for every aspect of his succession for some time. But what he left us most of all was his extraordinary moral legacy, consisting of unshakable teachings and beliefs, his determination and hard work for the future. His strength, his example, his integrity and his confidence in the future are and will always be our distinctive elements.”
After graduating in Economics and Commerce from the University of Turin in 1966, he joined Banca Sella that same year, founded in 1886 by Gaudenzio Sella with six other brothers and cousins, led at that time by his uncle Giorgio and his father Ernesto. As per family tradition, he started at the “counter” and worked his way up, through all stages of his career.
In this environment, as he himself wrote when describing his professional and entrepreneurial journey, “from birth I have inhaled values such as ingenuity, entrepreneurship, a sense of responsibility, work ethic, honesty, dedication to the family business, the importance of the unity of family shareholders and love for the customers who feed us bread (which is one of the teachings that has always lived in our family and business)”.
He served as CEO and General Manager of the bank from 1974 to 2002, guiding its growth across the nation and its innovation in organization, technology infrastructure and customer service. From 2000 until May of this year he was president of Banca Sella Holding, the holding company of the Sella group that emerged from the important development of the family bank, where he was also president of Banca Patrimoni Sella & C.
He was also responsible for the birth of the family holding “Maurizio Sella Saa”, which was eager to guarantee optimal governance, and he was its president from its birth in 1989 until 2021.
Thanks to his entrepreneurial commitment, in 1991, at the age of only 49, he was made a Knight of Labor and in 2018 a Knight of Grand Cross, the highest title of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic awarded by the President of the Republic. Since 2019 he has led the National Federation of Cavalieri del Lavoro, having led the Piedmont Group in the previous three years.
He is particularly involved in representative organizations of the banking sector and the business world, in Italy and Europe. From 1990 to 2006 he was president of the Italian Banking Association, during the four consecutive mandates foreseen by law, in a period of great transformation, privatization and consolidation of the sector, also marked by the historic transition to the Euro. He is still a member of the Executive Committee and a member of the Presidential Committee. From 1998 to 2004 he was also president of the European Banking Federation (FBE).
He was among the animators and president of the Association of Italian Family Businesses (Aidaf) from 2007 to 2013, president of the Association of Italian Joint Stock Companies (Assonime) from 2013 to 2017 and in the same year was a member of the Corporate Governance Committee of the Italian Stock Exchange.
At European level, he was the liaison for Italy in the Payment Systems Steering Group and in the Payment Systems Technical Development Group from 1992 to 1997. Subsequently, he served as “alternate president” on the Sepa Board of the ECB, from 2010 to 2014, and on the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB), starting in 2014. He also twice chaired the Groupement Europèen de Banques (GEB), which was created in 1978 to encourage comparisons between small and medium banks in various European countries. Since the 1990s, he has been part of the Council on Relations between Italy and the United States and the Italian Group of the Trilateral Commission.
He is a founding member of the Cavour Foundation in Turin and President of the Luigi Einaudi Institute in Rome.
Photo source: Sella Group
(ITALPRES).
