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I reveal the merits and errors of Cesare Romiti. Speak Ruggeri (ex Fiat)

I reveal the merits and errors of Cesare Romiti. Speak Ruggeri (ex Fiat)

Me, Fiat, Romiti, the trade unions and more. The story of Riccardo Ruggeri, former top manager of the Fiat group, interviewed by Italia Oggi

“Romiti was wrong not to understand that he had to focus on the core business, the car, and on its internationalization. His talents? Execution, the ability to make strategies immediately operational, a rare gift for managers as well as politicians. And loyalty to the property was the only CEO, with Vittorio Valletta, who never had the temptation of a coup ». Riccardo Ruggeri , who joined Fiat as a worker in Turin, at Officina 5 in Mirafiori (Fiat workers as well as his colleagues) spoke about the former CEO and then president of Fiat, Cesare Romiti, who passed away in recent days in Milan at the age of 97. parents and grandparents). In 1991 he will become CEO of the colossus New Holland, the new company for agricultural machinery Fiat-Ford both in dramatic crisis, which he, in 5 years, restored and listed on Wall Street, «the most beautiful managerial adventure of my life». Among Romiti's closest collaborators, Ruggeri says: «Today those who say that he destroyed the union are wrong. The union was already in crisis, with the Fiat case in 1980 committed suicide. And the march of the 40,000 white-collar Fiat is a hoax: 3,000 moved from Mirafiori. The other demonstrators, like my mother, were ordinary people who decided to spontaneously join the streets of Turin. None of us expected a participation of that kind ».

Who was Romiti?

There are two Romiti. The manager who joins Fiat as financial director in 1974 becomes CEO in 1976. He does an excellent job, then at the end of the 1980s he refuses to leave in full success. Like others, he doesn't understand Mani Pulite and remains clinging to power until retirement. These were dark years for him and for Fiat.

There is also the entrepreneur Romiti, who joined the Gemina finance company in 1998, controlling RCS, the publishing house of which he was also president until 2004, as well as Impregilo and Aeroporti di Roma. But the entrepreneurial adventure went less well than the managerial one. Because?

There is no sudden entrepreneur at 75, the world was changing, he was a dated man.

In the aftermath of Romiti's death, many remembered him with interventions and interviews. What do you think?

Except for some memories of real life, I find that many reconstructions and evaluations are vitiated by the fact that we reason with today's logic on problems of the day before yesterday. Romiti's was classic capitalism, what we live today is CEO capitalism, in which the man is no longer at the center of the scene but the consumer. He was a champion of his time, superior even to his two bosses, Gianni Agnelli and Enrico Cuccia.

Romiti's dowry?

In a Fiat conditioned by politics and trade unions, Romiti knew how to take difficult decisions with determination and speed, because he had execution, that is, the ability to pass from strategies to the realization of what he had thought of doing. One who would never have made a decree to swab fewer than ten thousand people without having the swabs or the organization to carry them out.

Can you give me an example of decisions you have made?

I had been chosen by Romiti as CEO of New Holland, born from the acquisition by Fiat of Ford tractors, both technically bankrupt, that is, two dying men were put together. I decided to take a violent action, close the two HQs (headquarters, 350 executives and officials in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as many in Modena), creating a new HQ of only 20 people in London. A slap in the face to the Deep State that there is in every great human organization. Romiti supported me, Agnelli would never have done so. The lawyer called me when I decided to close the entire strategic planning office. He asked me: but who will make the strategies if he fires them all? I replied with a smile: in a technically bankrupt company I do them in the morning while I shave. I'll give you another example.

You are welcome.

One Friday in May 1991 the Minister of Agriculture Giovanni Goria called me and told me that he had just signed the dissolution decree of Federconsorzi, which for a century had been the sales network of Fiat tractors. From one day to the next I find myself without more sellers in the area, all the market share in Italy vanished in one night, obvious closure of some factories. Instead of following the practice of then (and today) "opening a table", and throwing myself into an exhausting negotiation while the competitors would have taken away my market shares, I simply decided to take note of the termination of the relationship with Federconsorzi. I proposed to Romiti to create a new network of private dealers, I gave myself a month, I toured, thanks to the Fiat plane, all of agricultural Italy, meeting potential dealers, appointing them on the field. Romiti leaned on me. In Rome they were furious, I had stolen the game of mediation and reciprocal counterparts from them.

Romiti is also remembered as the man who defeated, or if he wants destroyed, the union, the tough man who imposed the law of the market on the factory in the hot autumn of the 1980 riots.

A wrong reconstruction, of those who do not know or no longer remember those years. Two facts followed which were intolerable. First, the trade unions accepted that groups of violent workers (it was known that they were adjacent to the BR) made good and bad weather in the workshops, mocking other workers and bosses. Second fact, Enrico Berlinguer, the secretary of the PCI, appears in front of the gates of Mirafiori to say that we do not sit at the negotiating table, but that the negotiations are done with the megaphone in the squares. Fiat had a real problem of redundancies, just as the problem of competitiveness was real. The negotiations were in the hands of the most radical avant-gardes, the official union was timid and irrelevant. The head of the fake opposition had become a barricadero. They were unreliable counterparts.

Let's recap: Romiti had announced 14 thousand layoffs, on 13 September 1980 an all-out strike began with the blocking of all productions. A struggle that lasted 35 days and continued even after the layoffs were withdrawn. It ended on October 14 when 40,000 Fiat chiefs and middle managers parade through the streets of Turin in the name of the right to work. The unions then capitulate and sign the agreement on layoffs. Operation that was directed by Romiti?

That of the demonstration of the 40 thousand intermediate leaders is a hoax. From Mirafiori 3 thousand moved, along the way many common citizens followed them and so they became 40 thousand. My mother, in her seventies, a former Fiat worker, phoned me: "I'll take the Italian flag and step alongside." Riots are dangerous, like avalanches, you know how they start you don't know how they arrive. None of us expected such participation.

The next day an agreement was made that provides for the layoffs for 23,000 workers.

The deal was actually ready from the previous day. There was only one point, however decisive, on which there would never have been an agreement: the unions wanted the layoffs in rotation, for everyone. Fiat instead wanted to be able to decide who to leave at home, so as to put out former terrorists and the most extremists. After the demonstration, the "rotation" clause was omitted.

Was the union over?

He had committed suicide.

And today?

CEO capitalism does not foresee a role for the so-called intermediate bodies (trade unions, Confindustria and the like): there are algorithms, robots, the monopolistic vision of business. A world is disappearing and we believe in the fake truths that they feed us, promising us a bright future. Instead it will be the sofa of citizenship.

Romiti's mistakes?

We young people on the Steering Committee told him that the future was the internationalization of the core business, the car, but he, taken from the Roman world and from the enormous power that a diversified Fiat gave to the lawyer and to him, preferred to jump into other various businesses, from insurance to construction, thus dispersing resources.

Yours was the vision of Ghidella, who wanted to merge with Ford.

Exact. Romiti had to throw in the towel at the end of the Eighties, in the height of success. He and the lawyer had to allow Vittorio Ghidella to make the deal with Ford and Umberto Agnelli to become President, as planned.

What relationship did Romiti have with Gianni Agnelli?

He has always been loyal to the property.

And what kind of relationship did you have with Romiti?

Like all powerful people he had his own mini-court, I was not part of it, but I never had any damage. Being two men of execution, we spoke very little, I had total autonomy, he approved of everything I did. He was a dated man, tough but true.

She was later fired from Fiat.

Yes. I was fired in 1996, as soon as New Holland was listed on Wall Street. My period was over. Umberto Agnelli said to me with a smile: "Fired for excess of success." It was the best managerial adventure of my life. Thanks to the dismissal, I refused other prestigious proposals and became self-employed, a VAT number.


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/cesare-romiti-fiat-ruggeri/ on Sat, 22 Aug 2020 04:45:45 +0000.