Roberto Civita

Roberto F. Civita (9 August 1936 – 26 May 2013) was a Brazilian businessman and publisher. Born in Italy, and the Wharton Advisory Board. He was part of the Board of Overseers of the International Center for Economic Growth (founded in 1985 with headquarters in Panama).

Early life and education Roberto Civita was born on 9 August 1936 in Milan, Italy to Sylvana and Victor Civita, who worked in publishing. He had a younger brother Richard. His family moved to New York City in 1938 after passage of the Race Laws in Italy. In 1949, the family moved to São Paulo, Brazil, where his father, Victor Civita, had founded the Editora Abril, first publishing comic books under license from the Walt Disney Company. (Donald Duck was the first title, released in 1950). The Company began to sell magazines through subscription sales rather than depend on newsstands.

Like other publishers, Civita struggled to maintain press freedom under the long years of the repressive military government that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Some compromises were forced, as the government censored press it did not like. According to Carta, for being deemed an "enemy of the government", the military asked Roberto Civita to fire him. In exchange, the state bank Caixa Econômica Federal granted the company a loan of US$ 50 million.

In 1982 Civita became president of the Grupo Abril, which had become one of the largest publishers in Brazil. He took command of all operations in 1990, after the death of his father Victor.

Following this revelation, a May 2012 article in Mino Carta's CartaCapital compared Civita to the controversial British publisher, Rupert Murdoch, because of his effective control of so much of the Brazilian media and the use of methods that were less than ethical. This was published during the proceedings of the CPMI do Cachoeira, a widely reported parliamentary investigation of the Goiano Capo Carlinhos Cachoeira. It found that Cachoeira had unorthodox connections with politicians who were (as the ex-senator Demóstenes Torres) and are (as the Rio's councilman Stepan Nercessian) opposed to the Workers Party.

In response, the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo, (owned by the Marinho family's media conglomerate, the largest in Brazil) editorialized: "Roberto Civita is not Rupert Murdoch." The editorial said that "blogs and pro-government media outlets that act as the auxiliary line of radical sectors of the PT" had unleashed "an organized campaign against the Veja magazine."

Naspers Searching for capitalization, in May 2006 Civita sold 30% of the Editora Abril to the South Africa's media conglomerate Naspers. This group was noted for its historical ties with the apartheid regime. In response to criticism, Civita said he chose this alternative rather than to capitalize the publishing arm from Grupo Abril. He did not want to submit his long-term vision to satisfy quarterly results for shareholders.

Maintaining ties to the University of Pennsylvania, he has participated in leadership of the Lauder Institute Civita was on the Board of Overseers of the International Center for Economic Growth (founded in 1985 with headquarters in Panama).