The current Minister of Business and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, has indicated the former prime minister as one of the causes of the decline of the Italian automotive industry: his responsibility would be that of having sold, at the time when he was head of ‘Iri, the Biscione to Fiat, instead of accepting Ford’s offer
A clash that occurred in the present day, but with distant roots, which go back even a century. The back and forth between Adolfo Urso, Minister of Business and Made in Italy, and Romano Prodi, former Prime Minister, on the sale of Alfa Romeo to Fiat in 1986 reopens a wound that has never completely healed in the history of the Italian automotive industry. The Biscione house, which belonged to the State since 1921, was owned by the IRI from the moment of its creation in 1933. The Institute for Industrial Reconstruction was a public body created in the fascist era with the aim of saving several banks, and the companies exposed to them, from bankruptcy, before becoming a state point of reference for industrial policy, at least until the large privatizations of the 1990s.
the sale of alfa romeo
—
Alfa Romeo was owned by IRI and in the 1980s, when Romano Prodi was president of the body, it had enormous losses and debts in the order of hundreds of billions of lire, which led to the decision to sell it. In 1986 the Milanese company was contested between the Italian Fiat and the American giant Ford: the choice was between further growing the largest industrial company in the Bel Paese or welcoming a new competitor, with a name and accounts as high-sounding as those of the Blue Oval. In the end it was Fiat who prevailed who acquired all the shares of Biscione, according to many also due to strong political influences. A negotiation which therefore ended with the expansion of the Italian group, limiting internal competition, a fact which many now consider to have been penalizing for the Italian automotive industry.
Urso’s attack
—
Minister Adolfo Urso certainly thinks this way, as he declared in recent days: “I hope to be able to give good news regarding the Italian automotive sector in the next week too. We are working to recover the inaction and errors of previous governments which did not intervened significantly – he commented thus in a public meeting – The big mistake in car policy was when the president of IRI at the time decided to sell Alfa Romeo to Fiat and not accept Ford’s investment – he commented thus the minister – Precisely for this reason today in Italy we have a single car manufacturer while other countries, such as France, Germany, Poland, have three, four or five. Therein lies the great mistake of Italian politics and it has a name and surname: Romano Prodi“. An attack that was anything but veiled, which led the former prime minister to reply.
Prodi’s reply
—
Romano Prodi, former prime minister and president of IRI at the time of the sale of Alfa Romeo, replied: “I am amazed by the lapidary certainty with which Minister Adolfo Urso yesterday, at the conference of young entrepreneurs, decided to attribute to me the responsibility for the fact that in Italy we only have one car manufacturer due to Ford’s failure to acquire Alfa Romeo. I am therefore forced to refresh the Minister’s memory on that stretch of our country’s industrial history – Prodi writes in a note – My goal has never been to sell Alfa Romeo to Fiat: I have never been a monopolist. Instead, I made contact with all the possible buyers and only Ford showed interest. The negotiations, masterfully conducted by Finmeccanica technicians, led to a request from Ford for talks with me. When their plan was ready I warned Alex Trotman, president of Ford Europe, that once it was made public everyone in Italy, under the pressure of Fiat, would react, from the unions to the mayors to entrepreneurs. And so it was. Ford, despite this, had decided that it would not offer a single dollar more. Fiat stepped forward by putting more money on the table and offering to buy all the shares, unlike Ford which, as it had promised, did not raise the bid. At that point Finmeccanica had no alternative but to sell to the highest bidder, according to legal obligations.”.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED