Telling your life means writing a novel because you have gone through the last decades of entrepreneurial history as a protagonist and not only of Italy. Would you like to help us by summarizing the main stages?
«My story begins in a concierge at number 9 in Piazza Vittorio Veneto in Turin. My grandfather and my father (and for a period also my mother) were FIAT workers and in 1953 I too was hired in the Mirafiori plant. In the concierge I had a school of life. People of all kinds passed through it: I've seen more of them than any other child of my age. It was an unparalleled sociological cross-section, an open book ».
But then his career within FIAT was fast and unstoppable ...
“After three years as a worker, I was promoted to an employee in engine design. I constantly asked my bosses for new jobs, I couldn't bear to be idle. A unique experience: I learned to know Fiat better than my pockets, there was no production unit whose flaws I ignored. So when Umberto Agnelli chose a US consulting firm to divide Fiat into three sectors - cars, industrial vehicles and diversified companies - he chose me as the interface for the Americans. The general manager Gian Mario Rossignolo asked me to prepare a corporate reorganization plan for him. I gave it to him on Friday night. On Sunday morning he summoned me to his house: “Keep it to yourself: the new CEO, Carlo De Benedetti, has fired me” ».
A decisive meeting for his career ...
«With the Engineer I immediately took care of personnel and organization and I learned one fundamental thing: costs are more important than revenues. I was the only manager to remain standing in the 100 days that De Benedetti spent at Fiat. Subsequently I became CEO of all the companies in the group that were doing badly, with a very large room for maneuver: Ivi, the Italian paint industry of Milanom then the Fiat-Oto Melara consortium ».
Another important step was the restructuring she carried out as regards the tractor branch of Fiat and Ford ...
«In 1991 he merged two virtually bankrupt business branches: on the one hand Fiat tractors and Fiatallis, on the other Ford tractors. The result is a colossus, New Holland, with 21 plants on four continents, present with its earthmoving machines (tractors, combine harvesters, excavators) in 140 countries around the world. When I embarked on this adventure, New Holland was worth $ 2,5 billion. After five years, I had raised it to 6 billion with half of the employees. The crowning glory of the bailout was its listing on Wall Street, where New Holland's stock reached 32 times its initial net worth. But a few days before the listing, an official arrived in my London office from Turin who kindly pointed out to me that, having turned 61, I had to retire. Probably it was envy for the excess of power achieved ».
However, the following years were rich in other important business initiatives ...
“After the experience of a lifetime, I created an avant-garde fashion industry in Paris with my sons and daughters-in-law that launched Rick Owens, a visionary designer discovered in California, worldwide. He wrote three books in two years, founded a publishing house, named Grantorino in homage to the team of the Bull in order to donate profits to a Christian organization created by Pierre Tami, a former Swissair pilot who took 3.000 prostitutes off the street and has transformed them into Cambodia's most important catering company ».
One of his latest initiatives was to create Zafferano.news. What is it about?
«I founded my first magazine when I was 17 and attended the Amedeo Avogadro Technical Industrial Institute in Turin. At the age of 84, my passion for journalism led me to create a new magazine to which I wanted to give the name of a perennial plant, saffron. It was born in the midst of the crisis of publishing, of print media, of digital attempts to make it live again. We are a group of people, free men who live off their work in areas far from journalism, we consider ourselves people who appreciate reading and writing (and being read), and we love - even physically - newspapers, both printed and online. We are convinced that this crisis, identical to that of other product sectors, is the result of an extension of the concept of disruptive innovation by the sociopaths of Silicon Valley and of the cultural, political, economic model that (unfortunately) dominates the West from a quarter of a century (in unsuspecting times I baptized him CEO capitalism). We have thus transformed our “reader competence” into a “journalistic execution competence”, drawing on the principles and values of our past professional experiences. We know that we are nothing more than journalism artisans, and as such we propose ourselves: the success that over 12.000 subscribers have given us is an extremely positive result ».
Your formula is unique in the publishing landscape ...
«Saffron.news it strictly excludes money from its territory: the publisher has donated the digital platform, the subscription is free, no one is paid, advertising is refused, even if, given the very high number of selected subscribers, there is no shortage of proposals. We do not have an office, we only work via e-mail, there is little use of mobile phones. Our way of writing wants to be impeccable in form, documented, severe, but always light and ironic ».
You mentioned CEO capitalism, the subject of some of your recent books (Men or consumers, Il Signor CEO, Grantorino Libri, publisher in Turin), Would you like to explain this concept better?
«“ CEO capitalism ”, which entered its phase of decline with the economic crisis of 2008, is the name I wanted to give to the cultural, economic and social evolution of capitalism that dominated the West after the fall of the Berlin Wall. After the contrast between the two US / USSR blocs and no longer a frontal enemy, capitalism has in fact changed its skin and substance, mixing cultures that had nothing to do with each other, to create a model that is embodied in its symbolic figure: the CEO, the supermanager who governs huge companies without being the owner and without the risks of the owner. The central idea of CEO Capitalism is the transformation of man, citizen and worker into consumer. It is a capitalist system where little is produced and much (and very correctly) talked about, where a small group of supermanagers earn astronomical figures while most people earn little or very little but still enough to remain a serial consumer of food, objects and services that become more and more poor. CEO capitalism has accustomed us to products-services of little value that cost only apparently little and that, in reality, make the very few owners of digital ironworks enrich in a fantozzian way. Everything has become a commodity up to the (interested) gratuitousness of the world of digital communication ».
Finally, a spontaneous question: For you, who have long associated with men and women at the top of the world economy and politics, what is power?
“Power is the drug of companies. I admire the great men of power when they place themselves above contingent facts. Vittorio Valletta earned little money in Fiat, which he bequeathed to the center for the diagnosis and treatment of tumors named after his only daughter. In the secret chambers of power no grand strategic plans are conceived. Instead we find the same mix of capable and incapable, intelligent and idiots that we meet in everyday life ».
