Saturday, June 18, 2016

Dead Vittorio Merloni, the king of Italian appliances – BBC

Vittorio Merloni, former president of Confindustria and a symbol of a piece of Italian industrial history with refrigerators and washing machines from Fabriano have entered the homes of half the world, becoming a case history in the American Business School , is gone, after a long illness. He was 83 and was honorary chairman of Indesit Company and Fineldo, the family holding company that in October 2014 sold the majority stake of the company to Whripool appliances. The funeral home will be open in the first plant in Fabriano. The workers will form the guard of honor to accompany the coffin. The funeral will be held in Fabriano Monday at 17.



the Marches entrepreneur, married to Franca Carloni and father of Maria Paola, Andrea, Antonella and Aristide, after graduating in Economics and Commerce in Perugia, began his career in 1960 working in ‘ company founded by his father Aristide. In 1975 he founded Merloni Elettrodomestici, whose Vittorio Merloni becomes president until April 29, 2010, when he stepped down to his son Andrea to become honorary president. In 1980 he became president of Confindustria for four years. In 1984 he was appointed a Knight of Labor. The parable entrepreneurial company that manufactures large appliances (washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, ranges, ovens and paino cooking) with Indesit, Ariston, Hotpoint brands, continues with the listing in Milan in 1987. And the stock market fund a whirlwind of international acquisitions that bring the Merloni group to be number two in Europe. The overwhelming growth, driven international expansion, become a model to be studied: so Merloni becomes a “case history” at the Stanford Business School.

The change of company name from Merloni Indesit Company, in 2004, marks another historic step, which will be followed by many other companies. There are reasons behind the choice of marketing, because this way you identify the company with its best known brand. But for the Fabriano group it is also a further step towards separation from the ‘company family, who for several years is managed by external management. Vittorio Merloni fact has always chosen to take care of the strategies, leaving the operation guide to managers, who helped launch, by Andrea Guerra, now in charge of Eataly, after 10 years at Luxottica, Francesco Caio, now managing director of the Italian Post Office.

With Vittorio Merloni goes some way to make capitalism . When the company was in trouble, his entrepreneurial spirit told him, instead of cutting, invest to grow through acquisitions. Because at stake it was not only the fate of the company, but the microcosm consists of all employees and their families. “There is no value in the economic success if it is not accompanied by social progress’ was the motto of Father Aristide who has always inspired the group’s philosophy. From the beginning when, after starting in Piedmont, the founder transfers production in the Marches, then a poor, predominantly agricultural area. Born with the group a new figure, the “factory-worker ‘, a little’ sharecropper and a little ‘heavy engineering, for the laborer is divided between the factory and the fields.

To illustrate the life of Vittorio Merloni remain today many photographs . With the Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer, during the difficult negotiations on the escalator when he was at the top of Confindustria. With President Sandro Pertini, after the victory of the World Cup in Spain in 1982. With the Queen Elizabeth, who appointed him Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2003, two years after the acquisition of English Hotpoint. Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi, during the visit of the factory of washing machines in Russia, why turn to factories was one of his passions, along with Ferrari, which Merloni was a great collector. So much so that on the day of its 70 years, the 20,000 employees it amazed giving him the Red with which Michael Schumacher won the Formula 1 World Championship in 2002 (but without the motor).

June 18, 2016 (edited June 18, 2016 | 13:09)

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