Draghi’s Capitalist Model That Recast Italy Is Running Aground

On June 2, 1992, Italy’s then-chief Treasury official, Mario Draghi, stepped aboard Queen Elizabeth II’s yacht, Britannia, docked near Rome, to ask a group of British bankers for help in slimming down the country’s bloated public sector.

Almost three decades later, and a year since he left as European Central Bank president, what became one of the region’s biggest privatization programs is now in reverse. Companies from the wave of selloffs Draghi inaugurated that day to promote growth and reduce debt, such as toll-road operator Autostrade, are being clawed back in a new era of state intervention.