According to his account, Debono started as waiter and a barman in the early 1980s, before taking on a small tearoom, which he turned into a successful restaurant, whose owner asked him to become a partner. He went on opening a bar, a discotheque, and a pizzeria. He then opened an 80-room hotel in Mellieha, bought the Tunny Net restaurant, and a 3-star hotel. He obtained a bank guarantee from Thomson in London to open a 95-apartment complex. Later he contacted the Hard Rock Café franchise in Orlando, Florida, opening the first Hard Rock Café in Malta. [3]
He also established partnerships with the Accor Hotel Group, and RIU Hotels & Resorts.[4]
In the late 2010s, db Group had become the largest hotel operator in Malta, with over 3,500 beds and 2,850 employees.[4] In April 2017 the db Group issued a €65 million 10-year Bond at a fixed coupon of 4.35%m, which was listed on the Malta Stock Exchange one month later. [4]
On 11 March 2017, Silvio Debono filed 19 libel suits against Daphne Caruana Galizia - one per each line in a post that the journalist had written about the highly controversial ITS land deal at St George's Bay. Caruana Galizia had noted that Debono exploited a legal loophole allowing him to file a separate case for each article or comment, regardless on whether they had the same author and content.[5] Debono and the family of the slain journalist reached an out-of-court settlement in 2021.[6]