Twist in the race for the Presidency of Confindustria. A few hours before the meeting of the General Council which was supposed to vote on the new President tomorrow, choosing between Edward Garrone, vice-president of Erg and President of Il Sole 24 Ore, e Emanuele Orsini, small entrepreneur from Emilia and outgoing vice-president of the organization of private industrialists, Garrone decided to retire, taking a step back and paving the way for Orsini's coronation. He did it by sending a long letter to Confindustria in which he explains with elegance but not without some polemical barbs, land reasons for his sensational gesture.
Garrone: the reasons for the withdrawal
Faced with the tensions and fractures that arose during the long battle for the renewal of the association's top management during which - Garrone essentially claims - there was no shortage of "deplorable aspects of our system", Confindustria needs recover drives which cannot be guaranteed by a president elected by a few votes and needs - this is the key step not without controversial implications - "a Presidency at the service of Confindustria and not a Confindustria at the service of the President". Hence the step back with bitterness but a sense of respectability.
As in 2000, the contrast between large industry and small businesses, which then marked the unpredictable defeat of Fiat's top manager Carlo Callieri and the rise to the Presidency of the small Neapolitan entrepreneur, Antonio D'Amato, once again the leadership of Confindustria ends up in the hands of a small entrepreneur like Orsini, whose rise has been punctuated by a thousand controversies, but who will obviously be judged by the facts and not by the size of his companies, Sistem Costruzioni srl and Tino Prosciutti .
From how Orsini moves, it will soon be clear whether the future Confindustria, which is awaiting epochal challenges, will be in the hands of a small entrepreneur or whether it will be a small Confindustria. With D'Amato who, in controversy with the large industrial families, flattened Confindustria over the Berlusconi government and ruined Il Sole 24 Ore, then at the height of its success, ended badly. But history doesn't always repeat itself. Or at least we hope.
