Steve Acunto has been a business and non profit leader as Chairman, Trustee and Director of notable corporate, academic and cultural institutions. He is an advocate of ethical capitalism and of personal engagement and financial commitment toward sustaining the best of Western traditions in art, culture and public policy.
Corporate
Mr. Acunto is Chairman of Beacon International Holdings and its family of affiliated companies, dating to 1978 in media, insurance and capital markets.
Since 1978, CINN Global through the group has been an established information and media hub in insurance. Insurance Advocate, published uninterruptedly since 1889, along its titles in the financial services, insurance, and public policy sectors have included more than 30 other titles over its nearly 45 years.
In 2019, Mr. Acunto created Beacon International to form what has fast become one of the leading financial publishing companies in the world in the risk and insurance fields. Beacon is publisher of US insurance market leader, Business Insurance (Chicago) Commercial Risk (London) serving the UK, the EU, and Africa; Global Risk Manager iUK and International); Asia Insurance Review (Singapore) serving Asia; Middle East Insurance Review (Amman) serving the Middle East and North Africa; Insurance Connect, Insurance Trade, Insurance TV and Societa e Rischio (Milano and EU) and WorkCompCentral (Tampa and San Francisco) serving the US workers’ compensation insurance market.
Beacon media offer more than 50 conferences and events per year across the world, drawing more than 30,000 professionals from its market leading audience of 1.9 million internet visitors per month and total 130,000 subscribers. Through CINN, Beacon has created and, in some cases, both created and managed several international and national business organizations.
The Company’s affiliated book publishing division, Measure Publishing Inc., holds these imprints: Chickadee Prince Books, a boutique publisher with best selling authors and titles; Aquilan Library; and Capolavori, each serving its own audience.
Through the Company investment banking affiliate, Aquilan Sovereign Risk Capital, LLC, CINN Global specializes in sovereign risk financing in co-operation with such partners as Credit Global, Ltd. and Four Square Internationale Societe Anonyme SCC, (Luxembourg).
Mr Acunto is a Managing Partner of Salomon Brothers Encore; of SQrinsurance, Inc; and is President of NYREX Development Corp, developers of the New York Insurance Exchange.
Mr. Acunto serves on several corporate boards, including NYREX, Maya Insurance Company, and Credit Global.
Volunteer
Academic: Mr. Acunto serves as Trustee and member of the Executive Committee, John Cabot University of Rome (since 2002); as a Chancellor, Consular Corps College, Washington (since 2012) and, formerly as Trustee, Secretary and Executive Committee Member, College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York (1997 – 2023) and was elected Trustee Emeritus of the University of Mount St Vincent in 2024. From 2018 to 2023 Mr. Acunto served as Chairman of the Council of Governing Boards, Inc. comprised of 15 trustees representing the more than 2,000 trustees of New York’s 110 independent colleges and universities.
Arts: A passionate opera fan, Mr. Acunto is President of the American Society of Friends of Italian Opera, a member of the Board of Directors of the Palm Beach Opera, a patron of the Metropolitan Opera. He is publisher of L’Opera/Realities, the monthly magazine of opera and luxury. he has chaired the American Institute for Verdi Studies at NYU 1993-1998. Currently he chairs the Bel Canto Society Inc., and has arranged for the sustaining of its unique archives of the collection. He is an Honorary Chairman of the Chamber Orchestra of New York. He produced the world premiere of Deloss Brown’s stage adaptation of the Stendahl classic The Red and The Black at New York’s historic St. Clement’s Theater; produced the award-winning short film Just Ancient Loops (Sundance, Rotterdam, and Clermont-Ferrand Film festivals); co-produced the off-Broadway play Queen for a Day and produced Rossini’s La Cambiale di Matrimonio at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.
Italian Commercial and Cultural Affairs: Great-grandson of Michele Berardini, the first and among the most successful Italian merchant bankers to open branches in the U.S. (1870 to 1924) and creator of US patented international money transfer systems (1905), and grandson of composer/pianist Stefano Acunto (“Young America”) and architect Ercole Bisordi, Mr. Acunto remains active as a volunteer in Italian cultural, commercial and public affairs in the tradition of his forbearers as Chairman of the Italian Academy Foundation, Inc., founded in 1947. IAF’s “cultural diplomacy” initiatives have included more than 60 concerts at Carnegie Hall, and elsewhere in New York and Italy, as well as fine art shows, films and publications. The Foundation has sponsored new works such as Salvatore di Vittorio’s Ovid Symphony and several concerts and recordings of the Chamber Orchestra of New York and of a number of Italian classical artists. The IAF publishes the highly prized quarterly, (Italian Journal). IAF sponsored the 2014 landmark exhibit Frate Francesco at the UN, featuring rare manuscripts of St Francis of Assisi for the first time ever outside Italy, and the IAF underwrote the exhibit of Ahmet Ertug’s famous full sized photograph of da Vinci’s The Last Supper, at the Union League Club of New York.
Mr. Acunto served from 2002 to 2017 as Hon. Vice Consul for Italy in New York State, responsible for commercial, cultural and social interests of Italy. For his work on behalf of Italy in the United States, he was decorated with the rank of Commendatore, Order of Merit, Republic of Italy, and in 2010 received Italy’s Star of Solidarity, Grande Ufficiale (Stella della Solidarita) among Italy’s highest accords.
Education and media
Mr. Acunto holds his B.A. and M.A. degrees (1971, 1973) in classical philology (Latin and Ancient Greek) from New York University. He was graduated from Mt St Michael Academy in New York and is fluent in Italian, French and German. Mr Acunto is the author of Westchester County, a History and Appreciation (Windsor Books, Whittier, CA 1991) and is editor of several art books, including: Giobbi: Representative Works; New York Colors, an Impressionist’s Ode to the City; Imaginal Realism (‘Realism Immaginale’), the first introduction to this landmark artistic movement in English; and Urban Archaeology, an anthology of the work of Giorgio Radicati; and Roma non sponte sequor, his Keynote speech for the New York State Historical Society in 2010. He has lectured on art at the Harvard Club, and the United Nations on St Francis of Assisi and at the Guggenheim Museum during its landmark retrospective on Italian Futurism. Mr. Acunto served as a weekly guest commentator from 2012- 2108 on European and American affairs, notably the early Ukrainian crisis, the Obama Presidency and the Papacy on ARISE TV, broadcast from London and Johannesburg to the UK, EU, Africa and the Middle East.
Memberships and service
Mr. Acunto is a Chevalier, Order of SS Maurice and Lazarus, the dynastic order of the House of Savoy and is a Chevalier, Order of the Holy Sepulchre, founded in 1336. He is an active member of the Union League Club of New York, where he has chaired ULC’s Arts Committee (2019-2024) , the Tiro a Segno Club, the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, the Palm Beach Yacht Club , Circolo degli Esteri (Rome), and Trump International Club in Palm Beach. He has been an active participant in the Path to Peace Foundation directed by the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations since 1998.
Personal
Mr. Acunto and his wife, Carole Haarmann Acunto, divide their time among residences in Greenwich, Connecticut, Rome, Italy and Palm Beach, Florida. They are communicants of St. Agnes Church in Manhattan Their daughter, Claudia Palmira, resides in Rome, Italy, with her husband, Mauro Benedetti and their son, Ludovico. The Acuntos’ son, Stephen Jr., his wife, Dr. Veronica White, and their sons, Enrico and Edoardo, reside in Princeton, NJ.