(Finance) – Goodbye a Roberto Colaninnoreaches the age of 80, seeing the value of the stock market of “his” Piaggio steadily close to historical highs, since in 2006 it decided to list it on Piazza Affari. The one in the motorcycle group based in Pontedera is the second half of his professional career. “The first half”, the title of his biography until 2006, is above all the operation that made him a manager and entrepreneur of international renown, the takeover of Telecom by the “razza padana”. In those pages, for the first time, the usually very reserved manager born in Mantua but from a Bari family, had also explained his industrial vision.
Rewinding the tape, Colaninno graduated in accountancy and became a doctor in 2001 thanks to an honorary degree in economics and commerce from the University of Lecce. He married Oretta Schiavetti at the age of 26 in 1969. Two sons, both in careers: the first, Matteo, born in 1970, is executive vice president of the Piaggio Group, and for three legislatures he was a deputy, reaching the position of minister of economic development in the shadow government of the Democratic Party, member of the management and economic manager of the national secretariat of the Democratic Party, and parliamentarian of Italia Viva. the second born, Michele, born in 1976, is the managing director and general manager of the Immsi industrial holding, responsible for product innovation and marketing strategies of the Piaggio Group, and president of Acemthe European motorcycle industry association based in Brussels, in which all the world’s motorcycle and scooter groups participate.
For Colaninno senior, the beginnings are in 1969 at Fiaam, an auto components company in Mantua where he was first administrative director and then managing director. In 1981, still in Mantua and still in the car components sector, he founded Sogefi which was later absorbed by Cir, the holding company of the De Benedetti family. The turning point that brings him to the front pages of the newspapers takes place in 1996 when he comes appointed CEO of Olivetti. The Ivrea-based company, famous throughout the world for typewriters and computers, is changing skin having given life to Omnitel, the first private mobile telephone company, and Infostrada, which instead managed the fixed network as an alternative to Telecom, which at the time was a monopolist.
Precisely starting from this technological “treasure”, sold for over seven billion euros to the Germans of Mannesmann who in turn will sell it all to Vodafone, the takeover bid for Telecom Italia in 1999 was born, after Romano Prodi had decided to privatize it in 1997 to put the public finances in order in view of entry into the euro. Following his appointment at Olivetti, Colaninno participates in the company’s capital through Fingruppo SpA, a joint-stock company in Brescia. Alongside Fingroup, among the other reference shareholders of Olivetti, there are Hopa and the Luxembourg box Bell, financial companies linked to Emilio Gnutti, which also include the former number one of Unipol, Giovanni Consorte, Mps and subsequently Fininvest. The American bank Chase Manhattan acts as guarantor, and the then chairman of the board, Massimo D’Alema, called them “brave captains”. Colaninno, who is not a shareholder of Bell, has a mainly industrial vision of the operation. Under his guidance, in the following two years Telecom strengthened considerably at an international level and extended its business sectors, from fixed to mobile telephony, from the Internet to television, founding La7, from satellite communications to computer systems.
But Bell’s shareholders had a purely financial view of the operation, and just two years later they sold Provera to Marco Tronchetti’s Olimpia. Colaninno, in disagreement, resigned. At the time of his resignation, Olivetti’s debt had not been reversed in Telecom due to a precise financial strategy by Colaninno himself. In 2002, also thanks to the severance pay, the stock options obtained from Olivetti and the sale of minority shareholdings, the manager from Mantua restarts by acquiring Immsi, company in the real estate sector, which it transformed into an industrial holding through which it acquired Piaggio in 2003. In December 2004 it expanded its industrial perimeter, and with theacquisition of the motorcycle brands Aprilia and Moto Guzzi enters the motorcycle business. In 2006 the quotation with which the debt was reduced. Since then the group has grown significantly: is the largest European manufacturer of scooters and motorcycles and one of the main global players in this sector (the proprietary brands of the group are Vespa, Piaggio, Aprilia, Moto Guzzi, Gilera and Derbi), produces light commercial vehicles (the Ape and il Porter), and since 2015 it has created a robotics division, Piaggio Fast Forward, the Group’s research center on the mobility of the future based in Boston, which has given life to the land drone Gita, equipped with follow me technology. Immsi differentiated its investments by entering the shipbuilding field, acquiring Rodriquez Cantieri Navali of Messina and Intermarine of Sarzana – today among the world leaders in the production of minesweepers and minesweepers – and in the real estate and tourism sector, with the Is Molas Golf Resort, the prestigious real estate development project in Sardinia.
In 2008 for Roberto Colaninno there is also thecommitment to CAI, the Italian airline called to save Alitalia and with the IMMSI Group is one of the founding partners of the new company that acquires the airlines Alitalia and Airone. Also in this case, the subsequent change of ownership did not allow him to complete his recovery plan that he had foreseen for Alitalia, thus closing another chapter in the troubled history of the national airline. Besides that President and Director of Alitalia, Colaninno has been a member of the Board of Mediobanca, Capitalia and other financial institutions, as well as of the Governing Council and Executive Committee of Confindustria.
His academic career is also rich and worthy of note as are the prestigious awards. In addition to the honorary degree in economics and business from the University of Lecce, in 2013 you received the hc master’s degree in management, innovation and service engineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. In 2000 he was nominated Cavaliere del Lavoro and in 2014 he was awarded Officer of the Legion d’Honneur by his Excellency Alain Le Roy, the then French ambassador to Italy, who commented “a great Italian entrepreneur, respected and esteemed by everyone”.