without measures the companies will be destroyed- time.news

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“Without the adoption of adequate measures, many companies, whose operation is also considered necessary for our country, will not be able to continue their life shortly and will fall into a collapse that will lead to their inevitable destruction”. So on May 1, 1932 Credito Italiano communicated to Benito Mussolini in a “highly confidential” document the situation in which the bank and the companies found themselves that the institution had financed and / or owned shares. These were groups of strategic importance for Italy such as Ansaldo, Cantieri Navali di Napoli, Saturnia (Beni Stabili-Aedes), Maccarese, Meridionale di Elettricità, Franco Tosi, Redaelli, Cotonificio Valle Seriana, Elettrofinanziaria.

The book

The document, found in the bank’s historical archives, is published in the volume published by Laterza «Unicredit, a history of the Italian economy. From the Bank of Genoa to the Credito Italiano 1870-1945 ”, by Piero Barucci who, professor at the Universities of Siena and Florence, was president of Monte Paschi and managing director of Credito Italiano and then Minister of the Treasury in the Amato and Ciampi governments. The volume, which opens with a preface signed by Cesare Bisoni and Jean-Pierre Mustier, who will be replaced in their respective roles as chairman and managing director by Pier Carlo Padoan and Andrea Orcel at the assembly of 15 April, is part of the series «History of banks in Italy ”carried out under the auspices of the ABI, an initiative that is part of the broad line of studies concerning the credit sector, a key player in the entire Italian economy. “In this universe of investigations and studies one could notice an absence: that of Credito Italiano, a bank that has not had the honor of a monographic study dedicated to it up to now”, writes in the introduction Barucci, who will present on March 30 the volume together with Bisoni, Padoan, ABI president Antonio Patuelli in a debate moderated by Ferruccio de Bortoli, columnist and former editor of Corriere della Sera.

The Bank of Genoa

The history of Credito Italiano, today Unicredit (as will be seen in the second volume, the author foretells), is closely intertwined with that of the country. The roots of the institute reside in the Bank of Genoa, founded in April 1870, a few months before the Porta Pia breach, which operated until 1895 until it was transformed into Credit, in Milan, where the headquarters and general management. This first volume investigates and reflects on the role that Credit has played, as a protagonist and with its own peculiarities, in the years in which the country’s industry was born and grew, from the first entry into the war, the fascist regime, the “bank reorganization” , of the crisis of ’29, of the birth and development of the IRI, of the Second World War, of the Resistance, in which its exponents participated in various forms.

Great bankers and industrialists

A particularly articulated period of great changes, during which at the top and on the board of the institute we find great bankers such as Federico Balzarotti, Carlo Orsi, Giovanni Stringher and Mino Brughera. And also industrial-bankers such as Carlo Feltrinelli and “pure” industrialists such as Giovanni Agnelli, Giovanni Battista and Alberto Pirelli, testifying to the close relations between credit and industry that then led mixed banks to become “company leaders” and finally to instability and the irization of the Italian economy. Barucci, strengthened by his experience as a banker, minister and professor of Political Economy and History of Economic Doctrines, works in close collaboration with the Unicredit archive, which proves to be a precious source: “Together we moved among thousands of papers from a some point forward they became “traveling companions” ».

The “highly confidential” document

And in particular, thanks to this work of exploration, peculiar and at times exciting aspects emerge, told with expert but fluid prose by Barucci. If the “highly confidential” document mentioned at the beginning gives an account of the role played by the bank in the economy (which on that occasion proposes solutions on the eve of the great turning point with the birth of IRI) and if the documents that testify to the hostile takeovers made by industrialists in particular to Credit and Comit starting from the Great War in order to “be able to appoint advisors” loyal to their interests “, the pages and archive materials that may perhaps excite more concern aspects that are less strictly” banking ” but equally important for reflecting on the history of the institute and the country.

That uncut envelope

An example is represented by the envelope, “still intact” found in the archive, containing 300 shares of the “Popolo d’Italia”, of 1,000 lire each “which have been abandoned for decades despite entailing some rights that have never been exercised”. These titles are part of the financial support to fascism given by the big banks “and one of the most common ways was to pass the advertisement to the” Popolo d’Italia, or to buy shares in the publishing company. ”

The Credit “network” against racial laws

On the other hand, an almost unknown story, also due to the great confidentiality of the institution, concerns the bank’s actions following the enactment of the racial laws of 1938. From the archival documents it can be deduced that “the central management of Credit was committed to a continuous and very dense work of liaison between former employees “of Jewish race” and the heads of foreign branches or affiliates in order to provide them with the possibility of employment in countries other than Italy and Germany ».

The funds to the partisans and the cave of the treasure

Just as little known, “but on which a more accurate investigation would be appropriate”, is the fundraising organized in the Milan office for Resistance fighters during the last months of the life of the RSI. And again, the archival documents have made it possible to reconstruct events that say a lot about the institute. It thus emerges that, in order to protect its values ​​and those of customers by taking them away from the German occupation troops, the bank has transferred part of the assets to a cave prepared for this purpose in a “peripheral location upstream of Bologna”. An initiative which, according to what was traced in file 34, ended successfully. Lieutenant Colonel Waters announced on May 8, 1945 that the Undermountain was “intact” and that “the reopening is placed under constant surveillance by a platoon of 25 financial police”.

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