Goodbye to Vittorio Merloni, pioneer middle capitalism – Il Sole 24 Ore

The Vittorio Merloni death closes a cycle symbolically: the cycle of “capitalism in the middle”, that coming out from anonymity of the small enterprise has contributed, among the seventies and eighties, to increase and diversify the Italian industrial structure by adding the anchor of medium-sized manufacturing enterprises, family owned industry to state with Iri matrix and major private groups in the industrial triangle Milan-Turin-Genoa.

Merloni helped develop the industrial activity of Father Aristide, a founder of the Italian capitalism. According to a rationality also guaranteed by precise determination of functional perimeters and proprietary rights with respect to the brothers Francesco and Antonio, which occurred at the death in 1970 of his father Aristide, he dedicated himself to household appliances.

From Fabriano, in the Marche, thanks to this specialization the Merloni, this is the name that, he did well embodied the Italian development organization and services, incremental innovation and impact on consumption capacity and on the Italian tastes. A model that, meanwhile, also emerged from the analytical point of view in the writings of Giorgio Fua, which not coincidentally was teaching in Ancona, the capital of that region so far removed from classical trajectories of Italian growth and, at that time, so central.

In particular, the eighties are characterized by two phenomena that make this paradigmatic enterprise of historical trajectory of Italian capitalism: managerialization, leading to the construction of its own management school that will compare in a dialectical manner but not supine with the owning family, and expansion abroad. The first tendency is, in the then family-owned companies, far from widespread. The second is accomplished by a series of acquisitions: in addition to the acquisition of the main Italian competitor, Indesit, in 1985, the growth also takes place on foreign markets through acquisitions with the entry into the group, among others, the brands like French Scholtès, the Turkish Perkel Fabrica Portugal and the Portuguese. Therefore, Vittorio Merloni represents well the historical passage – between new business models and output from small domestic market – between the seventies and eighties.

The recognition of the centrality of the idea and the industry practice was evident when, in 1980, Vittorio Merloni was appointed president of Confindustria. representation had also thus realized, and had bestowed its recognition, to an entrepreneur who had not only helped to grow the company founded by his father, but he was also able to bring it to the center of the games and balances, the power and responsibility in the new Italy of that time.

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