The 20th anniversary of the lawyer’s death/ “Agnelli an icon of style”, says economist Riccardo Gallo, former vice president of IRI
“I have positive and negative memories of Agnelli. In addition to the undeniable style, there is also a management ability to be applauded. But also a certain mystification: it is not true that Fiat was a private company”. Riccardo Gallo, economist, already full professor at the La Sapienza University of Rome, has a long experience in the industrial field. He was vice president of IRI from 1991 to 1992 and an expert in the recovery of companies, especially in the manufacturing sector. Asking him for a memory of the lawyer Gianni Agnelli, on the twentieth anniversary of his death, means turning to a careful observer of the entrepreneurial dynamics that animated those years.
Professor, what role has Agnelli played in the Italian economy and what is his legacy?
I have two examples of him to give, one negative and one positive. Let’s start with the latter: it is true that as president of Fiat he was never a “manager”, but he still had political responsibility for the group. When in October 1980 there was the march of 40,000 (a demonstration against the pickets and strikes that blocked the factories for over a month, ed), it was Agnelli who supported this line and carried forward a recipe made of investments and returns to productivity. In fact it was one of the moves that resolved the car crisis in Italy after the oil crisis, the Yom Kippur disaster, Sundays on foot. Of course, it was Romiti who decided, but Agnelli endorsed this choice and represented a true example for Italian entrepreneurship.
And the negative legacy?
It is said that he was a private entrepreneur: it is a lie. He had an interest that bound him to the state. An example? The scrapping incentives with which he, in exchange, agreed to keep up the anti-economic processes. It’s not good, it’s not a private entrepreneur mentality. So much so that in 2013 I wrote that Sergio Marchionne, by refusing the incentives, started the real “privatization” of Fiat. Not because it wasn’t already a private company before, but because it freed itself from the relationship with the state once and for all.
But in what sense was Fiat not a private company under Agnelli?
In the past, Fiat’s behavior was partially publicistic. More precisely, previously Fiat could have received forms of compensation from the Italian State for improper charges, i.e. for a whole series of extra costs connected with the achievement of publicity purposes, for example productions, factories and localizations having an incomplete cost-effectiveness but intended for development of the Mezzogiorno or employment constraints.
Agnelli was also, as president of Confindustria, the signatory of the agreement with Luciano Lama for the indexation of wages in 1975. Today we are talking about it again but even in this period the accounts would not add up: this too is not a negative legacy of the ‘Lawyer?
It is. But I prefer to keep myself balanced: one negative and one positive memory.
Agnelli is also an icon of style, of elegance, in the broadest sense of the term. Agree?
I’ll tell you three episodes. On June 1, 1991, the President of the Republic Cossiga appointed Gianni Agnelli senator for life. The lawyer had to resign as a director of Credito Italiano, the IRI bank. Leopoldo Pirelli sat on the board of the other major Milanese bank, the Banca Commerciale Italiana. It was a sign of respect from IRI, a state-controlled holding company, towards the world of private entrepreneurship, it was also a remnant of the Italian mixed economy model envied by half the world. At that time there was the Andreotti VII government, the last chaired by Giulio Andreotti. The President of IRI was Franco Nobili from Andreotti. Well, in the last week of July 1991 Nobili brought to the approval of the Presidential Committee the appointment of Gianmaria Roveraro, a respectable person but an Andreottian, in the place of Gianni Agnelli who had resigned. I was the only one to object and to suggest that the lawyer should be replaced with another exponent of the same world. The following Sunday, July 28, in the Corriere della Sera Turani (evidently inspired by Turin) accused Andreotti’s IRI of poor courtesy and praised me. A few days later, an irritated Nobili objected that I hadn’t voted against and I replied that, for that matter, perhaps we hadn’t voted at all. I have often reflected on Turani’s concept of “lack of courtesy” in corporate matters.
The second episode?
At the end of February 1992, IRI sold its controlling interest in Cementir with a public tender procedure before a notary. A few days earlier, on February 18, the regulation of public offers for sale had become law, so that at the end of February the legislative offices of the government worked on the procedures for implementing the new legislation. The Agnelli family holding company owned Unicem in a bid to take over Cementir. In the previous weeks, at the presentation ceremony of the Alfa 155, Gianni Agnelli told me confidentially that he thought it “inelegant” that IRI and the bidders would not go through a takeover bid. Also in those days, Enrico Cuccia told me that in his opinion Agnelli was wrong to participate in a tender with entrepreneurs who were too inferior to the Turin company. In the end, Caltagirone won, which it relaunched several times, reaching an almost off-market price.
Last episode?
In 2002, a few months before the lawyer’s death, an event was held on a Saturday morning at the Lingotto in Turin, where it was known that the lawyer would intervene. I accompanied the Minister of Productive Activities, Antonio Marzano, of whom I was adviser for industry. I remember that with some hesitation I chose to wear a rather showy suit, double-breasted with peaked collars, pinstripe cornflower blue with a lighter blue line, a rather wide regimental tie, light blue of the same color as the pinstripe line. I was uncertain because it seemed like a gamble. Well, when I saw Gianni Agnelli arrive, limping, with a cane, I was fascinated: he wore a double-breasted suit with cornflower blue peak collars but much, much more eye-catching than mine, with a much wider distance between the pinstripe lines than mine, with an elegance bit vain. Here, in my opinion, all-round elegance was the distinctive character of Gianni Agnelli.
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