Word: montedison
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...Pirelli's move came just a couple of weeks after 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...
...butterfly's wings in Brazil could set off a chain reaction that results in a tornado in Texas. The interdependent world of Italian finance works in much the same way. Early this month, the automaker Fiat - admittedly, a rather large butterfly - joined in a hostile bid for Montedison, a conglomerate whose far-flung holdings include Italy's largest private-sector electric company. Such transactions would hardly seem to be the stuff of high drama. Yet that one move called into question the power of the élite investment bank Mediobanca - which owns 15% of Montedison - and started Italian investors buzzing...
...Battle for Montedison MONTEDISON: A Milan-based conglomerate (2000 revenue: $12 billion) with holdings in energy, agriculture, engineering, and chemicals. Among Montedison's key holdings is a majority stake in power producer Edison. MEDIOBANCA: Besides its position as Italy's largest merchant bank, Mediobanca also holds stakes in the giant insurer Generali and the media and fashion group HdP. Until Italenergia came along, its 15% ownership of Montedison made it the controlling shareholder. FIAT: Although best known as a carmaker, Fiat has subsidiaries in aviation, insurance, and publishing. It owns over 10% of HdP. It has teamed up with state...
From there Gardini masterminded Ferruzzi-Montedison's 1989 joint venture with ENI, which made him a global giant -- and began his downfall. From the start, there were rumors that kickbacks had been paid to political parties in return for approving the deal. Gardini soon found himself in conflict with Cagliari, ENI's ambitious chief. Each man controlled 40% of Enimont, but the Ferruzzi boss tried to tip the balance by having friends purchase a majority of the outstanding 20% stock. In the end Cagliari prevailed, and in November 1990 ENI bought out Gardini's stake at an apparently politically sanctioned...
...might have walked away a rich if restless man, since investigators could not untangle his schemes without some inside help. But they found their songbird last month, when Gardini's successor at Montedison was arrested and extradited from Switzerland. Giuseppe Garofano was brought back to Milan and immediately began giving investigators a detailed rundown of the company's double bookkeeping and multimillion-dollar payoffs to politicians. He gave them enough to issue warrants for the arrest of five top Ferruzzi executives, including Gardini...