(ANSA) - Milan, September 10 - Marina Berlusconi appears poised to take chair at Fininvest, the financial arm through which her father, Premier Silvio Berlusconi, controls his multimedia and corporate empire, according to reports in the Italian press.
She will replace Aldo Bonomi, who died August 31, and appears to be the natural choice after serving as deputy chairman during Bonomi's nine years in Fininvest's chair.
According to the Rome daily Il Messaggero, a Fininvest board meeting will be called at the end of the month, or at latest the start of the next, to make Marina Berlusconi's promotion official.
The daily added that the post of deputy chairman will probably be abolished and Marina Berlusconi will run her father's holding company together with Managing Director Pasquale Cannatelli.
Last year, the premier's oldest offspring was ranked atnumber 9 on Fortune magazine's list of the 50 most influential women managers outside the United States and was the only Italian on the list. She was the also listed in Forbes magazine's list of the world's top 100 executives.
Fininvest's core activities today mostly focus on the media and entertainment. Its subsidiary Mediaset controls Italy's largest private television group, with three national channels and a profitable advertising arm Publitalia 80, while Medusa handles its cinema activities.
The holding company also controls the giant Italian publisher Mondadori, where Marina Berlusconi is deputy chairman, and owns the AC Milan soccer club. The Mediolanum group, which is jointly controlled with the Doris group, handles Berlusconi's interests in insurance, financial and pension products.
Fininvest is one of Italy's biggest enterprises with an overall estimated value of 17 billion euros and an annual revenue in the neighborhood of five billion euros.
