Word: montecatini
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...largest merger in Italian history is about to create the country's biggest business (replacing Fiat). The merger is between Montecatini, the huge chemical-minerals complex, and the Edison Group, a private power company that switched to heavy industry in order to survive when Italy nationalized power in 1962. The resulting giant, which Italians are already calling "the supercolossus," would have united sales of about $1.5 billion, would control 70% of Italy's chemical production and much of its pyrite, potassium, bauxite and glass output. At the news that the government had tentatively approved the merger and that...
...second auspicious event of the week for Montecatini. Earlier, autocratic, meticulous President Carlo Faina, 71, who is descended from the Bonapartes, returned from a trip to Moscow with more to show than Ancestor Napoleon had ever brought away. Montecatini, announced Faina, will build six chemical plants for the Russians under a $110 million contract, will also exchange raw materials (including Russian oil) and finished products with them, and has worked out a technical-assistance agreement that will net more millions. The agreement is the largest that any Italian company has ever made with the Soviets...
More Remarkable. The sudden merger and sales activity is the more remarkable because only two years ago Montecatini was in deep trouble. The company, whose products range from aluminum to antibiotics, expanded too rapidly during Il Boom, found itself strapped by ambitious commitments, soaring wages and increased building costs when Il Sboom-the recession-hit Italy. Unable to obtain a needed $72 million loan in a shrinking capital market, Faina skipped a dividend for only the second time in 18 years, looked around for other relief. He found it in a partnership under which the Royal Dutch/Shell Group...
Saved by Shell, Faina moved to strengthen Montecatini. He acquired Adriatic Electric-along with Edison, one of Italy's five big pre-nationalization electric companies-and with it a $190 million expropriation payment still due from the government. Meanwhile, other nations gradually recognized Montecatini patents on such processes as Moplen, a light, easily molded polypropylene for which Chemist Giulio Natta won the 1963 Nobel Prize. Montecatini now holds 1,800 patents, fattens its income by licensing them in 30 countries. Sales are up 31% to $633.6 million this year, although rising costs continue to hold down profits...
...ENEL's managers, the dispossessed power companies are using their compensation to invest in profitable new private enterprises. Edison, whose corporate shell was left in private hands after nationalization, is now a leader in chemicals, computers and farm equipment. Adriatic Electric has merged with huge and powerful Montecatini. Even the state-owned IRI Finelettrica-which managed to get "nationalized" by being swallowed up by ENEL-has shifted its investments into steel and a nationwide telephone system, is now channeling compensation money into new industrial development in southern Italy...