Max, the Private Equity Novelist

This is the story of Max, and also of Clementina and Marco. Max is Massimiliano Naglia, 46, from Ravenna. Marco and Clementina are characters from Max's first novel, conceived twenty years ago and retouched, reworked and polished until its publication this year by Pendragon. Despite its title, The Eyes of Solitude (Gli occhi della solitudine) is an act of love, the product of Max's extreme devotion to literature and poetry. Nothing too strange about that, except that his main occupation is private equity - and in our collective imagination finance and creative writing make an unusual couple.
"Writing is a way of expressing who you are", says Massimiliano. "it's a moment of reflection, of growth and open-mindedness". And the fact of having such a creative soul is anything but the antithesis of his work, "because not only does it enrich you as a person, it allows you to get on the same wavelength with the people you meet, the people you do business with. They are, in fact, people, and like everyone they need to share thoughts and be listened to." Twenty years ago, Massimiliano started his career and contemporaneously brought Clementina and Marco to life. Theirs is a tormented story, while Max's is somewhat less rocky. He got a degree in civil engineering from the University of Bologna in 1988, and worked for four years at ENI. Then, almost out of nowhere, he discovered a passion for economics and decided to get a MBA at SDA Bocconi in 1993-94. "A strong interest in finance emerged from within me, and from that point forward it became my life, professionally speaking."
After the MBA Max first worked for what was to become the Unicredit Group, where he handled extraordinary financing, mergers and acquisitions, and private equity. Then he moved to the Intesa Sanpaolo Group, once again working in private equity, the area he still works in today thanks to his management position in the Ugf Group (Unipol). His creation is all grown up now, and Max talks about it with rapture:"Gli occhi della solitudine is a story about a complicity and a nearness of the senses that might have been a great love. The story of a man and a woman whose relationship, although confined physically to brief episodes, spreads and extends through time." Marco and Clementina meet at university, spend time together, part ways, and meet again. And they discover that what connects them – despite their apparently distant personalities ("Clementina is a complex person, melancholy, for whom changes bring strong, deep pain, who views life as dark sea occasionally crossed by a colorful sail; Marco is more open and sunny"), is an unusual sensibility wrought of reflections on music, art, literature, time and life itself. A great intellectual attraction. One naturally is inclined to ask just how much of this is autobiographical; how Marco is similar to Max (the common initial is no accident): "I do have many of his characteristics", the author confesses, "but I also got a lot while I was creating him. It's a process that often happens when writing, and it allows you relate to yourself, in addition to relating to the reader."

And here we return to his work in finance, which drew benefits both from technical classroom study and from emotional study at the writing desk. "the experience of writing, as well as that of music (I also have a diploma in piano), enabled me to establish more intense and stronger relations with my work, thanks to the harmony that is created by sharing more than just business." A book, then, that was "difficult to bring to a close and that required passion, commitment, involvement and a number of sleepless nights", but which today, through the reaction of its readers, is repaying Max. "Clementina and Marco are giving me back even more emotion than I spent to create them. Day after day", he concludes, "I realize that I have undertaken a great voyage of the soul."