Tomaso Tommasi di Vignano

Tomaso Tommasi di Vignano was born in Brescia, Lombardy, on 14 July 1947. He later said that he left his home city with his family well before university and moved to Venice. He described himself as a good pupil, adding that with parents as strict as his there was no alternative.

He studied law at the University of Padua, choosing it over better known cities such as Milan because of the reputation of its law faculty. He finished the degree in three years and graduated in 1970 at 23. He liked to recall that he failed civil procedure, his last exam before graduation, at the first attempt.

He joined SIP, the state telephone company and forerunner of Telecom Italia, in its personnel department straight after university. After eight years in Venice he moved to Rome, where he became one of the youngest executives in the company, and in 1989 he became personnel director of the SIP group, responsible for a workforce of 80,000 to 90,000 people.

From December 1992 to May 1994 he was chief executive of Iritel, which he restructured in 18 months ahead of its merger into Telecom Italia. From 1994 to 1997 he was a general manager of Telecom Italia, in charge of the international division and of the business and residential customer divisions. In 1997, as chief executive of STET, he completed its merger with Telecom Italia, a group then of 126,000 people, and he was then chief executive of Telecom Italia during its full privatisation.

From 1999 to 2002 he was managing director of ACEGAS, the municipal multiutility of Trieste. He led its privatisation and its placement on the stock market and later became its vice president.

In November 2002 he became executive chairman of the newly created Hera, formed from the merger of eleven municipal utility companies in Emilia-Romagna, the first such aggregation in Italy. He called himself its founder, crediting colleagues and the public shareholders who trusted him. In June 2003 he managed its listing on the stock exchange.

Over two decades Hera completed more than 50 mergers and acquisitions and expanded into Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Marche, Tuscany and Abruzzo. By the end of his term it served more than 300 municipalities and over 4.2 million people, employed more than 9,400 people against about 4,200 at the start, and had invested about 8 billion euros, more than one billion of it in the Bologna area. It entered the FTSE MIB in 2019 and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index in 2020. He also chaired the subsidiary AcegasApsAmga. His last term ended on 27 April 2023 and he was succeeded as executive chairman by Cristian Fabbri.

He described the hallmarks of his career as dedication, method, impartiality, curiosity, responsibility and passion, and said that wherever something needed reorganising he was the right man for the job. He argued that utilities must invest in innovation and digitalisation to keep infrastructure resilient to climate change while containing costs, and in interviews he described sustainability as a strategy rather than a slogan. He also spoke about the duty of companies and institutions to train young people and help them realise their ambitions.

He met his wife while studying at Padua, after wandering into a moral philosophy lecture in the faculty next to the law school. He said they had never been apart since, and that they had two children and, in later years, grandchildren. Their names were not made public in the sources reviewed. He lived in Rome. A condolence notice from publisher Andrea Riffeser Monti remembered his qualities both at work and in the equestrian world.

On 19 April 2023 Bologna mayor Matteo Lepore presented him with the Turrita d'argento, a civic honour for people who have contributed to the city's progress. On 20 April 2023 the city of Ravenna awarded him its city medal in a ceremony attended by mayor Michele de Pascale.

Hera's own YouTube channel holds many of his speeches and interviews, including shareholders' meeting addresses, sustainability report introductions and his appearance on the programme Dietro il titolo. After his death the company published a tribute video, Tomaso Tommasi di Vignano (1947 - 2026).

He is remembered as the architect of Hera and of a model of public utility aggregation that other Italian regions later studied. Michele de Pascale said Hera owed a fundamental part of its birth, growth and identity to him, and Imola mayor Marco Panieri called him a manager of extraordinary intelligence who left an indelible mark on the economic and industrial history of the region and the country.

Tomaso Tommasi di Vignano died in Rome during the night of 9 September 2026, aged 79. Hera announced his death on 10 September, expressing deep sorrow and saying that executive chairman Cristian Fabbri, chief executive Orazio Iacono and all its people remembered him with affection and gratitude. Condolence notices from Hera's board and others were published in Bologna and Trieste newspapers on 12 September 2026. The cause of death was not made public.