Italians loathe free competition, wrote Author Luigi Barzini, preferring to protect themselves by rigid organization. Barzini's theory is especially borne out among old-guard Italian financiers. To preserve their power — and the value of their investments — they arrange for their firms to control one another through a cozy network of holding companies. Chemical-making Montecatini Edison, Italy's largest private industrial corporation, was long the leading shareholder in both Italpi and Sade-Finanziaria, holding companies that, as it happens, control Montecatini Edison. Italmobiliare is 100% owned by Italcementi, an important shareholder in Bastogi, which in turn owns more than 10% of Italcementi.
As might be expected, many of these incestuous financial marriages turn out to be sterile. Prizing security above all else, Italy's interlocked industrial and financial titans have been reluctant to take the risks that are necessary to stimulate the country's economic growth.
At the same time, they have long wielded enough power to inhibit rivals from venture investment in Italy. The Italian stock market is controlled by about 20 financial companies of such interwoven ownership that their directors answer mainly to themselves. So few investors care for these conditions that the total value of shares traded on the Milan stock exchange in a year barely equals that traded on the New York Stock Exchange in a week. Worse, the system has begun to bleed Italy of funds that the country needs at home. During the first six months of this year, some $1.5 billion in capital went abroad in search of more profitable ventures. The outflow gave Italy an $897 million balance-of-payments deficit after five years of healthy surpluses.
Out of the Syndicate. The unhealthy financial system has come under attack from several fronts lately, as both the government and forward-looking private investors have sought to pry open the country's long-closed business establishment. Acting through a state-owned investment bank, the government-owned holding companies ENI and IRI quietly bought effective control of Montecatini Edison last October. Once in power, the state agencies ousted both Sade-Finanziaria and Italpi from a syndicate of controlling stockholders because the companies were owned by Montecatini.
In the private sector, a group of businessmen led by Cesare Merzagora, former president of the Italian Senate and now head of Assicurazioni Generali, the country's largest insurance firm, challenged Bastogi, a big holding company in which Assicurazioni owns a major interest. Decrying Italian financial companies as "a group of hens nesting on rocks," Merzagora's group demanded that Bastogi try to stimulate private investment rather than keep its capital in the serenity of real estate holdings. Another group, headed by Insurance Executive Ettore Lolli, joined with Tiremaker Leopoldo Pirelli to oust the conservative management of La Centrale, a holding company that had most of its $200 million portfolio in real estate and food. The new management has turned La Centrale toward a more active role in both domestic and foreign investment.