Ernesto Silvio Maurizio Bertarelli (born 22 September 1965) is an Italian-born Swiss billionaire businessman and philanthropist. The 2017 edition of the Sunday Times Rich List estimated the family's wealth at £11.5 billion, an increase of £1.72 billion since the previous year. Swiss magazine Bilanz estimated the family fortune at CHF13.5 billion. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bertarelli and family has an estimated net worth of $20.2 billion, as of 16 April 2021. Biography Born in Rome to Italian parents, his family moved to Switzerland in 1977. He graduated from Babson College in 1989, and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1993. Career His grandfather, Pietro, joined Serono, a pharmaceutical company founded in 1906. In 1935 Pietro became the company's managing director, a position he was succeeded in by his son, Fabio Bertarelli, in 1965. Bertarelli became CEO in 1996 and, along with his sister Dona, inherited ownership in 1998 on the death of his father. Changing the company's focus from pharmaceuticals to biotechnology, revenues increased from $809 million in 1996 to $2.8 billion in 2006. The company gained fame from its discovery of a natural hormone used in the treatment of female infertility, and its treatments for multiple sclerosis and growth hormone deficiency. Bertarelli and his family sold the company to Merck KGaA of Germany in January 2007 for US$13.3 billion, forming the new company Merck-Serono. His family split an estimated $9 billion stake at that time, which added to previous share sales when the company floated on the NY stock market in 2000, which is now invested mainly through his B-Flexion (formerly Waypoint Capital) investment vehicle. Bertarelli currently co-chairs – with his sister Dona – the Bertarelli Foundation which focuses on marine conservation and neuroscience research. B-Flexion Between 2002 and 2009, Bertarelli served as a board director of UBS AG. Management of the family's wealth is mainly through the B-Flexion, which invests through its six separate specialist investment managers including such areas as Swiss real estate, and US life sciences. These businesses include Kedge Capital, an investment management group specialising in hedge funds, private equity and real estate; Northill Capital, an asset management business; a UK real estate investment fund, Crosstree; and Gurnet Point Capital, a fund based in Boston that invests in healthcare and life science business. As well as these businesses, B-Flexion, which is headquartered in Geneva, with offices in Jersey, Boston, San Francisco and