His small, bent silhouette has become the most potent symbol of Italian family capitalism. For the secretive Cuccia has acted during the past half century as the great conductor of Italy's northern industrial and business dynasties - a sort of Toscanini of the country's private sector.
These days, however, his carefully crafted, if somewhat shadowy, world of closely-knit business interests appears to be crumbling. Only this week, Banca Commerciale Italiana (BCI), Mediobanca's commercial banking ally, was thwarted by the smaller Ambroveneto in a bid to link with Cariplo, Europe's largest savings bank.
The deal, had it been successful, would have expanded Mediobanca's sphere of influence in the country's rich industrial north at a time when the banking sector is undergoing a radical change and facing greater international competition.
More From This Section
Not only are Mediobanca's traditional Italian and international rivals questioning its strategy and future, but Italian Treasury officials whisper that the bank is losing its touch. Government officials say it was showing its age as early as 1993, during the privatisation beauty contest between investment banks.
Although it has preserved a strong international reputation as the country's only real merchant bank, hardly a week passes without some newspaper reports on the waning influence of Mediobanca. But some say Italians are too keen on building up financial and industrial figures as if they were football players, only to cut them down. ''A lot of superficial nonsense is said and written about Mediobanca and the all-powerful and seemingly eternal Cuccia,'' said a banker with a big US investment house.
''Compared with many other Italian financial institutions they still have some of the brightest people, they still reign over the domestic rights issue market, and you will still find their hand in most big Italian corporate deals.'' But no-one can deny that Mediobanca does have problems.
The past few weeks have been a Calvary of sorts for the bank.
What seemed to mark a triumphant comeback with the proposed merger between the Marzotto textile group and HPI, the industrial holding company of the so-called ''salotto buono''.
- or fine salon - of Italian private business, has turned into a public relations disaster with Marzotto deciding at the last minute to pull out.
The recent alliance engineered by the bank between Rinascente, the retailing group controlled by the Agnelli Fiat family, and Auchan, the French supermarket chain, provoked a storm of protest from Rinascente minority shareholders and US and UK institutional investors.
Above all, Cuccia's unusual reaction to the recent conviction on charges of illicit party political funding of Cesare Romiti, the Fiat chairman and one of the country's most powerful industrialists, suggested some measure of panic in the salotto buono.
Cuccia and a catalogue of leading business figures signed a letter published in the Italian business daily Sole 24 Ore expressing their solidarity to Romiti and attacking the judiciary.
The initiative appears to have backfired. ''I view it as an exercise in extreme arrogance - quite disgraceful,'' said an Italian banker. It is the bank's failure to adapt, say Mediobanca's critics, that risks turning it into a dinosaur. ''They have continued to rely on their near monopoly of Italian merchant banking which is now falling apart,'' said another Italian banker. Mediobanca's future evolution could now take a Darwinian twist. ''It will probably end just as it started,'' said an experienced Italian banker with a big US investment firm.
Set up in 1946 and controlled by three of the country's largest commercial banks - BCI, Credito Italiano and Banco di Roma, then all in state hands - it became the vehicle for Cuccia, who worked for Banca Commerciale, to create a counter force for the big private sector family groups against the appetites of the public sector.
But the government is now attempting to reduce the role of the state by privatising and liberalising the economy. And so Mediobanca's original raison d'etre is disappearing.
The consequent process of reinvention has not been helped by the bank's secret ways, nor by the problem of finding a successor of Cuccia's calibre. Vincenzo Maranghi, the bank's chief executive, continues to be overshadowed by Cuccia's near mythical reputation.
As a result, the balance of power has shifted from the bank to its main partners and essentially its most powerful ally - Romiti.
The Fiat chairman is a man of strong personality and ambition and has in recent years increasingly usurped Cuccia's role in the salotto buono. But his interests in Fiat at times clash with those of Mediobanca. Before the uncertainties caused by his recent conviction, the Fiat chairman was widely seen as moving to Mediobanca after retiring next year from the car group.
In the past few weeks, Fiat's Agnelli family has also signalled its intention to diversify its Italian banking relationships. Its Ifi and Ifil holding companies have acquired a 5 per cent stake in Instituto San Paolo di Torino, Italy's biggest commercial bank.
The Agnellis appear to be pressing San Paolo to forge closer links with Imi, a Rome-based investment bank, with a view to turning it into San Paolo's merchant bank.
Where does all this leave Mediobanca? ''The solution is so obvious that it probably won't happen because we are in Italy,'' said an Italian banker echoing the views of many of his peers.
For months there has been speculation that Mediobanca would return to its roots and be absorbed by BCI to become the merchant banking arm. The ground work seems to have already been prepared for such a move.
Last month, BCI elected a new board and a new chairman, but carefully avoided appointing a managing director to sit on the board. Instead, it appointed two general managers.
Although it dismissed suggestions that Braggiotti of Mediobanca was being groomed as a future managing director, the position appears to have been kept open.
This suggests that even the very heart of the Italian banking system is unlikely to escape the evolution of the species.'