Word: benedetti
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Three months ago, De Benedetti, through a family holding company, became the principal owner of Industrie Buitoni Perugina, one of Italy's largest food producers. Last week he took another big bite by announcing that he would pay $250 million for 51% of SME, a food subsidiary of IRI, the Italian government's vast holding company. The acquisition package includes more than 14 companies, which have 20,000 employees, operate 300 restaurants and 80 supermarkets as well as plants turning out everything from ice cream to tomato paste. Buitoni and SME together will have annual revenues of $2 billion...
Last week's deal added luster both to De Benedetti's reputation as a manager and to his flair for the dramatic, characteristics that have been his trademark for his nearly eight years at Olivetti. Says he: "This is the first time in Italy that a private businessman bought a state-controlled company and ! paid for it with real money, not pieces of paper or promises for future returns." After the new agreement is completed, Olivetti and the Buitoni- SME food group will remain separate corporate entities, but they will both come under De Benedetti's direction...
...When De Benedetti took over in 1978 as Olivetti's managing director, the company was almost moribund. It had not paid a dividend in four years, had more than $1 billion in debts and was losing $6 million a month. Olivetti is now the most profitable Italian industrial company. Last year sales increased 22.5%, to $2.6 billion, and profits rose to $201 million...
Putting companies together is nothing new for De Benedetti. He earned a degree in engineering from Turin's Polytechnic in 1958 and ten years later took over as manager of his father's flexible-metal-pipe plant, which had just 80 employees. During the next five years, the younger De Benedetti expanded the firm by buying up small, mostly unprofitable companies. By 1976 his company was Italy's largest producer of car components and had annual sales of more than $46 million...
That same year, De Benedetti accepted the post of managing director of Fiat. But after 100 days on the job, he submitted his resignation for reasons that neither he nor Fiat has ever revealed. In early 1978, Olivetti's board of directors offered him the same job with its company. He bought $17.3 million worth of the stock to become Olivetti's largest shareholder...