Economist Mario Monti to head Emergency Italian government following Berlusconi’s Resignation

Economist Mario Monti  will head an emergency Italian government following the departure of Silvio Berlusconi who resigned as Prime Minister on 12 November 2011. Monti made came into prominance as the powerful Competition Commissioner who took on U.S. corporate titans General Electric and Microsoft, blocking GE's planned merger with rival Honeywell and imposing a record 497 million euro ($683 million) antitrust fine on the software giant.

Mario Monti 

Mario Monti served as European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Services, Customs, and Taxation from 1995 to 1999 and then as European Commissioner for Competition from 1999 to 2004. He has also been rector and president of Bocconi University.

He was nominated by Berlusconi as internal markets commissioner in 1994, taking over the competition portfolio in 1999 where he served for five years. His technical expertise, sharp intellect and diplomatic skills added to his refusal to bow to intense lobbying pressures.

He was named as Senator for Life by President Giorgio Napolitano in the first week of November 2011 and  is expected to appoint a small cabinet made up largely of technical specialists to steer Italy through a crisis that has brought it to the brink of financial disaster. A convinced free marketeer, Monti always backed a more closely integrated euro zone and has written a series of articles in recent months against the Berlusconi government's policy failures.

He is chairman of the European branch of the Trilateral Commission, a body that brings together the power elites of the United States, Europe and Japan. He is also a member of the secretive Bilderberg Group of business leaders and other leading citizens.

Italy's main business and banking associations alled for a national emergency government with broad parliamentary backing. New elections are not due until 2013, giving Monti and his cabinet a window of around 18 months to implement the kind of painful reforms to pensions, labour laws and the public sector that markets and Italy's European partners are demanding.