Twenty-five years in Fiat, where he experienced historic stages such as the march of forty thousand. ” Manager of Ferro ”, leader of the anti-union hard line in the most difficult years of life in the factory, Cesare Romiti lived in the Lingotto group the most significant season of a professional life intertwined with the history of Italian capitalism. Then other stages: Gemina, the presidency of RCS. Born in Rome on June 24, 1923, he died today at the age of 97. The son of a post office employee, with a degree in economic and commercial sciences, Cesare Romiti took his first steps as a manager since 1947 in Colleferro, in the Bombrini Parodi Delfino Group. In 1970 IRI called him to Alitalia: general manager, then CEO.
In ’73 he is at Italstat. He has been with Fiat since 1974: he lives the years of strong trade union power, of ungovernable factories, of terrorism. In 1976 he became CEO together with Umberto Agnelli and Carlo De Benedetti. The Engineer leaves after only 150 days, but the dualism between Romiti and De Benedetti, two different visions, will drag on for years. Cesare Romiti was left alone in the command post when on October 14, 1980, after 35 days of strikes, 40,000 Fiat executives took to the streets against the union, which soon reached an agreement on a heavy reorganization. 1980 is also the year of the Fiat Uno, launched as a world premiere in Cape Canaveral, a symbol as a car of the Italians, the model that relaunches sales.
A creation of Vittorio Ghidella who will leave the company a few years later, it is said precisely because of the contrasts with Romiti who at that point also took over the leadership of Fiat Auto. From those years we tell of an increasingly strong relationship with the lawyer, Gianni Agnelli. And when in 1996, at the age of 75, the lawyer left the presidency of Fiat to become its honorary president, the baton passed to Romiti. Who remained president until 1998, when the 75-year limit for him too. Romiti was ahead of his time when in 1991 he was close to buying Chrysler; years later in an interview he explains: ” Gianni Agnelli and I had concluded the operation but Umberto Agnelli got in the way ”.
Two different characters, Umberto Agnelli’s soft approach, often in contrast with Romiti’s ” iron fist ”. These are also the years of Tangentopoli, which also affects Fiat. A conviction for false accounting, then revoked in 2003 when it was no longer a crime, brings to Romiti the almost unanimous solidarity of the Italian business world. ” Even if I had the desire to enter politics I would not be able to. I always say what I think, ” Romiti once said of his relationship with politics. Never a party card, just a temptation, would he confess years later in an interview, when Silvio Berlusconi asked him to run for mayor in Rome against Walter Veltroni (but then he chose Antonio Tajani).
In 1998, immediately after leaving Lingotto, with the severance pay from the Fiat presidency, Romiti joined the financial holding Gemina which, among other things, had taken over control of RCS from Mediobanca; until 2005 he was shareholder of Impregilo, and then entered the infrastructure business with the privatization of Aeroporti di Roma. In RCS Romiti he was president from 1998 to 2004. The departure from Gemina in 2007.
The Italy China Foundation was the most recent of his passions, wanted and created by Cesare Romiti in 2003.
–
