Word: italia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...model-showgirl known to Italians simply as Afef.) The Pirelli chairman does not yet yield the same kind of power as Agnelli, but he's trying. He took a major step in that direction last month when, together with the Benettons - of retail fame - he wrested control of Telecom Italia, the former state monopoly and now Europe's fourth-largest telecommunications company, from an upstart named Roberto Colaninno...
...Agnelli's Fiat engineered a takeover together with Electricité de France of energy giant Montedison. While both are billion-dollar deals, they are infinitely more important for their symbolic value. If Colaninno had shocked the Italian business establishment in May 1999 with his heavily leveraged takeover of Telecom Italia, July 2001 marked the return of the old guard. The Pirellis and Agnellis have been Italy's movers and shakers since just after World War II in what was known as the salotto buono, the exclusive club of northern Italian capitalists...
...rather Byzantine legislation, Mediobanca was Italy's only merchant bank for decades, which meant virtually no big deals were done without Cuccia. But by the late 1990s, the Cuccia-Agnelli alliance began falling apart. Mediobanca sided with Colaninno when he and his wealthy backers made their move for Telecom Italia. It was a direct challenge to the Agnellis, who had installed their own man to run the former state monopoly...
...direct confrontation between Fiat and Mediobanca is something we have never seen before in Italy," says Marco Bolgiani of Eptafund in Milan. But the onetime friends have had a few subterranean run-ins over the years. For example, the bank supported Olivetti's successful 1999 bid for Telecom Italia, which Fiat opposed. Still, the notion of a vendetta shouldn't be overplayed: shares in a company called HdP, whose investments include the newspaper Corriere della Serra and the designer Valentino, shot up briefly this month on hopes that Fiat might lead a raid there as well. Fiat had declined...
...What's more, they made Berlusconi's Forza Italia the nation's most powerful political party, with nearly 30% of the vote, and gave so-called Il Cavaliere a big enough majority to have a shot at staying in power for a full five-year term - something no Italian prime minister has accomplished since Mussolini. Turning out in large numbers, the voters themselves did what years of bickering about the election law had failed to do: weed out the small parties that have traditionally wielded undue power and concentrate support on the two main blocs...