Edition: U.S. / Global

Ambitious Financier Behind Pathe

Published: March 8, 1990

Giancarlo Parretti, the Italian financier, has stepped smartly from country to country and left a trail of lawsuits as he built a financial empire, rising far from his humble beginnings as a waiter on the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner.

An exuberant man given to hyperbole over his ambitions and vagueness about his finances, Mr. Parretti has said he intends to build the world's biggest movie group. Yesterday, his Pathe Communications Corporation agreed to buy the MGM/UA Communications Company for $1.2 billion in a deal that appears to advance his goal significantly and to quash, at least temporarily, persistent rumors that his appetite for media companies is not matched by the means to acquire them.

Mr. Parretti, who is 48 years old, could not be reached for comment. His spokesman, Craig Parsons, said Mr. Parretti had accumulated his wealth by ''buying companies in real estate and turning them around and selling them.''

Flamboyant and Mysterious

Certainly, he has spent freely since 1987, emerging as a flamboyant, if mysterious, force on the Hollywood scene, where his Beverly Hills mansion boasts paintings by Picasso and Goya. Proclaiming that communications - along with food and tourism - is an industry of the future, he bought control of the Cannon Group about two years ago, renaming it Pathe Communications. Mr. Parretti holds about 63 percent of the stock in the movie company.

His media acquisitions, which began with the French film company Pathe Cinema, have been largely coordinated through a web of closely held financial holding companies based in Panama and Luxembourg. The value of these assets, and the origin of the cash behind them, is unclear.

Until three years ago, Mr. Parretti had shown little interest in the movie business. Born in Orvieto, north of Rome, he worked as a waiter in London before moving to Sicily, where he said he used Government aid to buy and sell at least four hotels.

His next venture, a newspaper, was declared bankrupt in 1981, and Mr. Parretti is now on trial on charges that he falsified its balance sheet.

More Purchases

Mr. Parretti bought three Italian insurance companies in 1983 and sold them two years later to a Geneva-based merchant bank, Sasea Holding. Then he switched his interests to France, where for a while he said he was a representative of the Italian Socialist party, and to Spain, where he acquired real estate and tourism interests. The Spanish authorities have questioned Mr. Parretti over what they said was the illegal export last year of $459,000 to Andorra. No charges have been brought.

In Paris, meanwhile, Mr. Parretti's movie interests began with a meeting with the Rev. Cristiano Pagano, an Italian priest who was making a film about a young girl's vision of the Virgin Mary. Mr. Parretti invested in the movie and was rewarded with a private screening at the Vatican last year with Pope John Paul II.

He went on to buy control of Pathe Cinema, France's oldest movie company. But following French Government challenges and investigations into his past, Mr. Parretti reduced his holdings to a minority stake.