Gold Mercury’s historic legacy
The pioneering institution and global award that established Visionary Governance® as a civilisational discipline — since 1961.
The vision that started a leadership consciousness revolution
In the 1960s, a conviction was taking shape that the world was being governed without sufficient vision, foresight or long-horizon thinking — and that this failure began not with systems or structures, but with the consciousness of the leaders who ran them.
Eduardo De Santis — Italian film producer, entrepreneur and visionary with business interests spanning Italy, the United States and Europe — saw this clearly. Engaging with world leaders, journalists, academics and governments across continents, he advocated for a fundamentally different leadership consciousness: one that was anticipatory rather than reactive, cooperative rather than competitive, and oriented towards the long-horizon future rather than the pressures of the immediate present.
His conviction was precise and radical in equal measure: that if you change how leaders think — how they perceive their responsibility to the future, to cooperation, to the generations who will inherit what they build — you change everything that follows. Policy. Governance. Institutions. Civilisation itself.
This was not policy reform. It was not institutional reorganisation. It was a revolution in leadership consciousness — and it became the foundation of what Gold Mercury has stood for, built and advanced since 1961.
Eduardo De Santis (right) at the 1982 Gold Mercury International Summit for Peace & Cooperation in Karachi, Pakistan.
The founding of Gold Mercury
In 1961, Eduardo De Santis — with the support of Italian President Giuseppe Saragat — founded Gold Mercury International. Its Founding Charter established a bold new entity: a forward-looking, independent international organisation dedicated to advancing anticipatory foresight, Visionary Governance® and the frameworks of international cooperation, peace and long-horizon thinking on which a better governed world depends.
Gold Mercury was not founded to study the future. It was founded to help build it.
From its earliest days, Gold Mercury pioneered initiatives that were decades ahead of their time — enhancing future foresight capabilities in government and business, promoting peaceful conflict resolution, fostering international cooperation through trade, advancing the safety and rights of industrial workers, championing women's representation in management and society, advocating for responsible industrial stewardship and advancing progressive labour relations.
These were not peripheral concerns. They were the earliest expression of what Gold Mercury has always believed: that Visionary Governance® begins with the courage to see what others cannot yet see — and the commitment to act on it before the world is ready.
Eduardo De Santis, Founder of Gold Mercury International, receiving the Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana medal—one of Italy’s highest honours—from Carlo Marchiori, Italian Ambassador (1974), in recognition of his public service to the Italian Republic.
GOLD MERCURY MOVIE
Watch the movie about the history and legacy of Gold Mercury International.
The ‘Gold Mercury Statue’, the icon of a civilisational mission
Gold Mercury International adopted Mercury — the Roman god, the Greek Hermes — as its symbol. The choice was not decorative. It was deeply intentional.
In classical mythology, Mercury was the messenger of the gods — the divine mediator between worlds, patron of trade and human cooperation, the guide who carried vision and possibility from one realm to the next. No figure in the classical tradition better embodies the Gold Mercury conviction: that visionary leadership, peaceful cooperation and the courage to mediate between the present and the future are the foundations on which humanity's planetary future is built.
The original statue was sculpted by Flemish master Jean Boulogne — Giambologna — around 1564, one of the great works of Renaissance sculpture. His Mercury is captured in a moment of pure forward motion: weightless, one foot lifted from the earth, arm outstretched towards what comes next. The Megavisionary spirit made bronze.
For Gold Mercury, the statue embodies Visionary Governance®, excellence in leadership, peace through cooperation — and the Protectores Futuri conviction that those who carry vision forward carry it on behalf of all generations to come.
Gold Mercury Global Summits. Six decades of historic global dialogue
For over six decades, Gold Mercury Global Summits have brought together heads of state, nations, enterprises, international institutions and civil society at the highest levels of global dialogue — advancing Visionary Governance®, deepening international cooperation and designing the frameworks through which peace, trade and planetary futures are built.
Among the historic world leaders who have opened, hosted and participated in Gold Mercury Summits are President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev of the USSR — alongside hundreds of heads of state, ministers, business pioneers and international figures across six decades and every region of the world.
GOLD MERCURY HISTORIC SUMMITS
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![Gold-Mercury-Summit-Pakistan-1982]()
Gold Mercury Summit, Pakistan, 1982
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Gold Mercury Summit Poster London 2006
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![Gold Mercury International Summit Posters Cairo and Moscow]()
Gold Mercury Summit Posters for Cairo and Moscow
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![Gold Mercury Moscow Summit 1980 held at the Kremlin]()
Gold Mercury Moscow Summit, 1980, held at the Kremlin
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Gold Mercury Summit 1981, Sofia, Bulgaria.
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Gold Mercury Moscow Summit 1980
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![Gold Mercury International Pan African Conference]()
Pan African Summit 1982
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Gold Mercury Summit 1979, El Cairo, Egypt.
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Gold Mercury Egypt Summit – Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations, presiding over the event.
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![Gold Mercury Summit 2006, Venice, Italy. Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of HIV (third from right).]()
Gold Mercury Science Summit 2006, Venice, Italy, honoring Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of HIV virus (third from right).
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![Gold Mercury Summit, Rome, Italy.]()
Gold Mercury Poster for Roma Summit 1961
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![Gold-Mercury-International-Congo-1985]()
Gold Mercury Congo Summit 1985
Creating the World’s First Awards for Visionary Governance
In November 1961, Eduardo De Santis presented the inaugural Gold Mercury Awards at the Quirinale Palace in Rome — under the auspices of Italian President Giuseppe Saragat — establishing the world's first and only recognition for Visionary Governance® and peaceful cooperation.
From their very first edition, the Gold Mercury Awards honoured the leaders, enterprises and governments whose pioneering commitment to peace, international cooperation, long-horizon governance and global trade was shaping a better world. They were not prizes. They were a declaration — that Visionary Governance® matters, that those who practise it deserve to be recognised, and that the future belongs to those with the courage and vision to design it.
Over six decades later, the Gold Mercury Awards remain the world's only recognition of their kind — the pioneering global honour for Visionary Governance®, peaceful cooperation and planetary stewardship.
A legacy of historic world leadership. Six decades of Visionary Governance® at the highest levels of global power
Few institutions in the world can claim what Gold Mercury can: that across six decades, through the Cold War and beyond, across every continent and every ideological divide, the world's most consequential leaders have come to Gold Mercury's Peace and Cooperation Summits to advance the cause of Visionary Governance®, peaceful cooperation and humanity's planetary future.
Among the historic heads of state, world leaders and global figures who have participated in Gold Mercury Summits across the world's great capitals:
President Ronald Reagan — United States of America
President Anwar Sadat — Arab Republic of Egypt
General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev — Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
H.M. King Juan Carlos I — Kingdom of Spain
Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali — Secretary-General, United Nations
President Giovanni Leone — Italian Republic
President Giuseppe Saragat — Italian Republic
Sheikh Khalifa bin Sulman Al-Khalifa — Kingdom of Bahrain
From Washington to Moscow, Cairo to Madrid, Rome to Manama — Gold Mercury has been the convening ground where the world's most powerful leaders have come together in the shared conviction that Visionary Governance® and peaceful cooperation are the only foundations on which humanity's long-horizon future can be built.
GOLD MERCURY AND WORLD LEADERS
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![Anwar Sadat, Egypt Gold Mercury Award]()
Anwar Sadat, 3rd President of Egypt
1979 | Gold Mercury Award for Peace & Security for the Camp David Accords
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Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet Leader
1980 | Gold Mercury Award for Global Peace & Security for limiting the use of Nuclear Weapons
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Alvaro Uribe Velez, President of Colombia
2009 | Gold Mercury Award for Peace and Security
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![Queen Sofia of Spain Gold Mercury Award]()
Queen Sofia of Spain
1984 | Gold Mercury Award for Culture and Humanitarian Affairs. For her charity work towards children and the Queen Sofia Foundation.
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![Giuseppe Saragat, President of Italy, Gold Mercury Award]()
Giuseppe Saragat, President of Italy
International Relations
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![Gold Mercury Award, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States]()
Ronald Reagan, President of the United States
1982 | Gold Mercury Award for Peace and Security. Reagan Negotiated with Soviet Leader Gorbachev a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
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![Gold Mercury Award King Juan Carlos I]()
H.M. King Juan Carlos I of Spain
Gold Mercury Award for his efforts in safeguarding and promoting the democratic transition in post-Franco Spain.
The ‘Gold Mercury Handshake badge’, a symbol of ‘Peace & Cooperation’ in a complex world.
At the opening of every Gold Mercury Summit, something simple and quietly extraordinary would happen.
Representatives of Gold Mercury would move through the room — approaching each delegate, each head of state, each minister and business leader — and place in their hands a small badge bearing a single image: two hands in a handshake.
The Gold Mercury Peace and Cooperation Handshake badge asked nothing of its recipient except the most fundamental of human commitments — to exchange ideas, to listen, to cooperate and to reach across whatever divide separated them from the person standing next to them. In the great halls of the world's capitals, delegates from nations that had viewed each other as adversaries would look down at the same small badge in their hands and understand, in that moment, what Gold Mercury had always believed: that cooperation is not weakness. It is the most Megavisionary act of all.
The handshake badge remains one of Gold Mercury's most enduring symbols — a reminder that behind every system of governance, every framework and every planetary strategy, there is a human being willing to reach out their hand. That willingness — simple, radical and always possible — is the foundation on which every future worth inheriting is built.
In a complex world, the handshake remains the most powerful act of Visionary Governance.
In 2021, Gold Mercury marked six decades of pioneering Visionary Governance® — sixty years of convening world leaders, designing long-horizon frameworks and advancing the peaceful cooperation on which humanity's planetary future depends. It was not merely an anniversary. It was a testament to the enduring relevance of what Eduardo De Santis founded in Rome in 1961: the conviction that the future must be designed, governed and protected by those with the vision and courage to think across generations. In 2026, Gold Mercury celebrates its 65th anniversary — a milestone that will be marked by the ambition, scale, and Megavisionary spirit that have defined the institution since its founding.
Preparing to celebrate our 65th Anniversary in 2026.
Gold Mercury's founder and Chairman, Eduardo De Santis, was honoured by the Italian Republic with the Order of the Italian Star — Ordine della Stella d'Italia — presented by President of Italy Giorgio Napolitano in recognition of his extraordinary services to Italy and to the cause of international cooperation.
The Order of the Italian Star is Italy's oldest national honour, established by the Italian Republic in 1947 — in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War — as a symbol of Italy's commitment to rebuilding international relations, advancing peaceful cooperation and recognising those who serve the cause of a better connected and more cooperative world.
That Eduardo De Santis — the man who founded Gold Mercury to advance Visionary Governance® and peaceful cooperation — should receive Italy's most historic international honour is not a coincidence. It is a confirmation: that the mission he began in 1961 was not only visionary. It was right.
Eduardo De Santis and the Order of the Italian Star.
Eduardo De Santis, Founder and Chairman of Gold Mercury International received the ‘Order of the Italian Star’ from the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano.
Increasing our Visionary Governance® capacity.
Launch of GLOGO®
The Global Governance Monitoring System.
We are proud to announce the launch of GLOGO®, the Global Governance Monitoring System—a unique framework designed to make sense of global complexity. This innovative system represents a significant leap in our Visionary Governance® capabilities, enabling leaders and organisations to monitor, assess, and improve governance frameworks on a global scale. GLOGO® is designed to address complex global challenges and drive transformative actions for a sustainable, ethical, and peaceful future. GLOGO® includes a governance and ethical rating and alert system to understand the impact of decisions and events that affect our world’s sustainable future.
“I am honoured that Gold Mercury International mention and reward my efforts to promote peace with freedom, a goal toward which the people of the United States strive. Gold Mercury is correct in saying that only through international cooperation can peace with freedom become a reality.”
Ronald Reagan 40th President of the United States of America