CORPORATIONS Catini to the U.S At a private luncheon in Milan with a group of Italian industrialists, New York Stock Exchange President Keith Funston extolled the advantages of listing their stocks on the Big Board, where they would have free access to the world's biggest financial market. One of the intent listeners was blue-eyed, blueblood Count Carlo Faina, 62, president of Italy's giant Montecatini Co. Last week the exchange made an announcement: about Feb. 15, provided SEC agrees, the New York Stock Exchange will list 20 million shares of Catini, as it is known in Europe, the first Italian stock to be sold on the exchange. To facilitate trading, each U.S. certificate will represent five of the low-cost ($4.50 each) Italian shares. Said
Count Faina: "The listing means recognition of Montecatini's size and international stature."
The recognition was long overdue. Catini, little known in the U.S., is a whopper of a corporation by any standard. It is Italy's No. 2 corporation (after Fiat), and one of the world's top ten chemical firms. It has 60.000 employees. 167 plants and mines, 60 subsidiaries. 200,000 stockholders, assets of more than $600 million. From the Alps to Sicily, it straddles Italy's economy, producing 57% of the .country's aluminum (35,000 tons), 89% of its pyrites (1,200,000 tons), 80% of its bauxite, 64% of its phosphates, the majority of its chemicals. To produce chemicals by its own patented processes, Catini has built 155 plants costing $540 million in 23 nations (including the U.S. and U.S.S.R.) that turn out 7,000,000 tons of nitrogen annually, 13% of the world's total. Currently under contract: another 43 chemical plants for companies in twelve foreign lands, a deal with the Indian government to build hydroelectric works.
Catini's output is used from the cradle to the grave—from nipples on baby bottles to formaldehyde for undertakers. All this has paid the company well: between 1950 and 1955 sales soared 85% to $275,680,000; profits jumped 130% to $16.6 million, though 1955 earnings of 6% on sales were not as favorable as Allied Chemical's profit of 8%, Du Font's 22%. But Faina's goal is as American as apple pie, though it may seem as unlikely in cartel-minded, low-wage Italy as pie in the sky. Says President Faina: "I want every workingman to have 100 shares of Montecatini, a home of his own, a car. a refrigerator and television in his living room. It can be done, and we're going to do it."