Everything as expected. Carlo Bonomi is the president designated to lead Confindustria. The election came as part of the online vote in which the more than 180 members of the general council of the industrial organization participated by videoconference. The Lombard industrialist, who promises great changes and who will bring the north wind to Rome, will lead Confindustria for the next four years, succeeding Vincenzo Boccia from Salerno.
Bonomi won by a wide margin over Licia Mattioli, vice president of Confindustria with responsibility for internationalisation. 123 voted in favor of Bonomi and 60 for Mattioli. The victory of the president of Assolombarda was expected, despite the fact that the online voting mechanism had raised some doubts about the final result of the vote.
The definitive election will take place during the private assembly scheduled for May 20, but already on April 30 the president in charge will have to submit his program and the team that will support him in his four years of presidency to the council.
Class 1966, Bonomi has been president of Assolombarda since June 2017. He is president of Synopo, a holding active in the sector of instruments and consumables for neurology, and of its manufacturing subsidiaries, Sidam and BTC Medical Europe.
The new president will have a difficult task: that of lead Confindustria in the context of the biggest global economic crisis since the post-war period. It will be up to him to convey and direct the requests of companies grappling with the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But it will not be easy to change within Confindustria, which has been weighed down for too many years by the Roman bureaucracy.
“I am very conflicted in my personal emotions: on the one hand, a personal joy, but that immediately diminishes if I think of all our fellow entrepreneurs who are experiencing a very particular situation. Today is not the time to rejoice: there is concern for the future”. These are the first words uttered by Carlo Bonomi, after his appointment as president of Confindustria. “We must immediately put ourselves in the operational conditions to face the tremendous challenge that lies ahead of us with the utmost clarity and energy, to continue to bring Confindustria's position to all the necessary tables with respect to a political class that seems to me very lost and has no idea of the road this country has to take”, continued the manager.
Bonomi analyzes the current situation of businesses, launching a broadside at politics: "Italy has been placed in a highly and harshly restrictive regime, while our competitors in Europe continue to produce in many sectors, even today we only have aggregate data and no we can understand what is happening in reality, we do not have protective devices if we have to think about reopening, with regions that continue with different models, we cannot continue to use anachronistic Ateco codes that do not represent the manufacturing and industry of now and of the future. So politics has exposed us to a strongly anti-industrial prejudice which is making a comeback in a very important way in this country: I didn't think I would have to hear any more abuse that companies are indifferent to the life of their collaborators. Hearing certain statements from the union hit me deeply. I think we must respond with absolute firmness ”, said the designated president of Confindustria Carlo Bonomi, in his first speech.
So what to do? “Committees of experts are fine, but their proliferation gives the sense that politics hasn't understood, it doesn't know where to go, we have one committee a week, without powers, and time is our enemy, risks deactivating our presence in global value added chains, forgetting that exports were the key that allowed us to recover in 2014-2017, which was thwarted by having dismantled Industry 4.0, by provisions such as Citizenship Income and Odds 100. The path of getting companies into debt is not the right path, with times and methods of access to liquidity that are not even immediate for our companies, time must be quick and fast. It must be a time that makes us achieve two objectives: reopen production because they are the only ones that give income and work and certainly not the State as a father who dispenses favors and benefits and does not have the resources to do so; second, avoid a second wave of infections which would lead us to new dramatic and devastating closures”.
Bonomi's speech ended with a message of hope: “Together we must change Italy, we have a great opportunity, in a very dramatic moment, perhaps we have the possibility to make the structural changes that the country needs. The country requires an entrepreneurial class that takes responsibility for marking the path of this country and leading it into the future”.
“Now Carlo is right: we must rediscover the fundamental values of Confindustria's community spirit, if we want to transfer it to the country with cohesion, competence and unity. It will be difficult times, of sacrifices and few honors. The hope for Carlo is that he will be the president of the reconstruction of the country's economy and for this we will all be close to him, to work united and together". These are the words with which the outgoing president of Confindustria Vincenzo Boccia greeted his successor.
