Ferruzzi: the moment of truth has arrived. I was there, and I saw with my own eyes the arrogance with which Mediobanca destroyed the Ferruzzi empireshaping the industrial landscape of the time to his convenience. An arrogance that persists undisturbed, still evident today in the Generali affair, the crossroads of a thousand power games in Italy. A truth that after thirty years of suffering he will not be able to enjoy Arturo Ferruzzithe son of the founder Serafino, a gentleman with a mild temperament, always smiling and with a kind word for everyone who suddenly passed away yesterday at the age of 84.
Ferruzzi, a dynasty marked by tragedies and deaths that finally Carlo Sama and his wife Alessandra, Arturo’s younger sister, tell in first person with meticulous details – meetings, acts and appointments – in the book The Fall of an Empire 1993 Montedison Ferruzzi EnimontRizzoli publisher. On every single page of the book you think: “What is, is not what it seemed.” Paraphrasing a phrase taken from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, a novel that is well suited to this story, where vanity reigns supreme.
The vanity of Raul Gardini, of the Mani Pulite prosecutors, and of Mediobanca, led by a cynical Enrico Cuccia, who effectively expropriated the Ferruzzi Group, the only true Italian multinational of the timepresent at the highest levels in Europe in sectors ranging from sugar, to starches, from soy proteins to feed, from cement to concrete to name just a few. Alessandra and Carlo have finally decided to re-establish that level of truth betrayed by the media and politics. They knew how to wait patiently while maintaining a quiet elegance, a rare commodity in a world where everyone shouts. This is a courageous bookwhich can be read in one go like a mystery novel, and reveals a crucial piece of Italy’s history.
More than ten years ago, in the book The man who whispers to the powerful I found myself answering a question from Paolo Madron: “Arturo Ferruzzi and his family were forced to sign an unconditional surrender. I was among the few to oppose it, pushing for the Goldman solution, knowing that Claudio Costamagna had already received the green light from the international banking system, which considered the Ferruzzis the only true Italian multinational. But now fate was sealed.” Today Sama reiterates this truth with painenriching it with dramatic yet sometimes hilarious personal details such as Ca’ Dario’s adventure in Venice. He also talks about his extraordinary relationship with Gardini who, in the delirium of his ego, boldly uttered the famous phrase: “chemistry is me”.
It was Gardini, with his genius and his “pirate” spirit, who decreed the end of the Ferruzzi dynasty, with the desire to replace it with the Gardinis. Ambitious, megalomaniac and reckless, he exploited the treasure left by his father-in-law Serafino, going on to the point of ruin. Even after his death, despite great intuitions, his figure was almost beatified. With this book, Alessandra and Carlo break that thirty-year silence that they had imposed on themselves, so as to restore the history of Italy a truth that many have tried to bury and to their grandchildren a legacy of dignity and family pride. Mediobanca, as if nothing had happened, continues to expand its business long hand in finance, supported, moreover, by a president Renato Pagliaro, who after 14 years, with Consob and the Bank of Italy silent, should have lost his “independence” requirement. In the recent events of Tim, the Milanese merchant has played several roles in the comedy: from advisor for the sale of the network to KKR, to the management of so-called “independent” candidates for the board of directors, who are often not unwelcome. At the forefront of their recruitment, working hard, are influential executives such as Emilio Franco, CEO of Mediobanca SGR, and Massimo Menchini, the director of institutional affairs for over 15 years deus ex machina of Assogestioni with a passion for overseas professionals, preferably from the left.
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