- Brescian industrialists seem to want to forget the misstep which, for the second time, has exposed the limits of their Association (the AIB) in an attempt to bring its president at the top of Confindustria. Two unsuccessful attempts. Two burning failures. Two entrepreneurs – first Bonometti and then Pasini – roasted on the grill of provincial ambitions and amateurism in the preparation of candidacies. In Brescia, in private, one wonders why. Some whisper of a persistent Brescian anomaly made up of widespread wealth but equally paucity of planning. Still others, in hindsight, silent and well out of sight in all these months, only today reproach the AIB for having given birth cold a candidacy born badly, managed worse, ended disastrously. This is the case of the comment that appeared in a city newspaper. A former director of the Association, in acquitting the candidate skewered by the vote, indicates as an urgent way out the dismissal of the manager on duty, held as the only one responsible for the failed expedition and therefore the lamb to be sacrificed on the altar of Fate and Destiny, a cynical and cheater. At this rate it is already easy to predict the next third skid.
Things are different and the facts are tougher than the gossip hand-distributed before, during and after the march to nowhere; a journey based exclusively on communication, almost always kept within the city walls, well supported and well funded. Even the releases on the national newspapers have had the imprint of the little hands of professional promoters in what were once called "bellows". Often in Brescia the memory of Luigi Lucchini. But in the seventies, preparatory to the presidency of Confindustria, his interviews bore the signatures of Bocca, Pansa, Turani, Scalfari, Aspesi, Boneschi, Modolo and company growing up. In those years the "tondinari" entered, after twenty years of exclusion, the EEC Committee, until then reserved for state industry and the potentates of private dynasties. The industrialist who came down from the valleys, not welcome in the historic shareholding of the Brescian banks, did not line up, disciplined, waiting his turn to be called. He looked around becoming the strongest private shareholder of Banca Commerciale Italiana.
We leave the story to return to the news. Today it is absolutely clear that the real candidate of the central bureaucracy that has governed Confindustria for years was Lycia Matteoli. Equally clear is the fact that the director Marcella Panucci has plotted with the representatives from Brescia to give birth the imprudent candidacy of Giuseppe Pasini, evoked like Lazarus, to leave the tomb prematurely for the sole purpose of causing confusion and division in the Lombard camp. FIRSTonline wrote it in unsuspecting times and the facts finally confirmed it. Where then to look for the reasons for failure? It seems to me completely useless to rehash the abused schemes of a rich but short-sighted city and province. It would not explain why the current President of the powerful Coldiretti is from Brescia and that of Confapi as well.
Maybe it's time to look realistically inside the house and re-read the very recent history of an Association that has kept all its former presidents in the grip of internal opposition; who mortified in the secrecy of the urn, excluding them from the General Council, some heirs of historic industries; which entrusted the management of the association to a member of the Compagnia delle Opere, for a long time declared adversary of the AIB, at a time when the territorial power of CL and the political power of Roberto Formigoni were irreversibly declining.
An Association that has lost along the way the nerve of civil pragmatism to wear the livery of the “politically correct” to the point of legitimizing the table of a Prefecture as a permanent place for social, economic and union discussions. In truth, not without concealing the fact that in those rooms the preferential lane to the Cavalierato del Lavoro could mature. So much so that in recent years the Brescian entrepreneurs awarded have been more numerous than those of the entire previous secular life of the prestigious Order. The "politically correct" did not allow business decisions on Brescia Fair, for example, still doomed to promotional futility and the persistent red of its balance sheets. It has not allowed significant initiatives in the defense of historic banks to which we owe much of Brescia's industrial and economic success. Unlike the Bergamo entrepreneurs united and decisive in the fate of Ubi, the history of Bank of San Paolo, from the Agricultural credit and Bank of Vallecamonica they fell, like in a game of dominoes, one after another. How many industrial exponents on those Boards of Directors? All this while the country's credit was governed by a man from Brescia, Giovanni Bazoli, the most powerful of Italian bankers, second only to Raffaele Mattioli and Enrico Cuccia.
The last municipalized company left in the house, the Milk Center, it still is because it is openly defended by the world of agriculture and by a Brescian management deaf to the sirens of the large food industrial groups. The wound of financial adventures, all from Brescia, which involved many high-ranking entrepreneurs, permanently bleeds, sweeping fortunes accumulated with the work of the fathers into speculation. Even greater was the damage done to the formation of the current entrepreneurial generation, often raised in the supremacy of finance by assault and a capitalism of relationships. Accumulation speed, little effort, a lot of luck: values distant from, if not extraneous to, the culture of work, investment and growth.
Many of these, also for reasons of age, are today at the top of the association. Some of the most prestigious industrialists with manufacturing roots have poured increasing attention and financial resources on building speculation, characterizing themselves as real land managers and silent regulators of income and urban expansion. A mix of mingling with political power made up of compromises and exchange favors. In the end, now, there remains an impressive stock of unsold properties and the consequent disappearance of all the prestigious, centuries-old building companies in Brescia.
No names for the sake of country. In other events of lesser depth, the grit of these industrialists has been seen at work as well as in the bloody feud for the presidency of the Automobile Club which controls the business of the historic Mille Miglia. A clash with the white weapon that vertically split the entire world of entrepreneurial Brescia and that still weighs even now in the persistent associative rift. If you go through the gates of companies, you encounter a completely different world. It seems to live in a happy island, far from the ceremonies of the "politically correct". A reality made up of good work, international markets, excellent products, brands that have become the pride of Italy. A concrete dichotomy is touched by hand when compared to the reality of the behaviors of their associative representations.
Perhaps because inside the walls of the offices and workshops the "politically correct" is left in the reception and the subtle poison of the court and the courtiers has not affected the vigorous and vital body of production. Courtesy and the "politically correct" are the evil that has weakened the associative body, lobotomized its memory, its role, making the horizon indecipherable and the path uncertain. Courtiers wallow in these conditions, abusing bows and praising even when preparing poison or concealing the dagger. But the child who shouts "the King is naked" has also arrived in Brescia.
The name of Luigi Lucchini is often mentioned but little is read of his life lesson and his entrepreneurial journey. The words pronounced by the industrialist di Casto before the Assembly that was calling him to lead Confindustria are surprisingly topical. The Brescian of steel, son of poor people, legitimized his presidency in having been able to travel the history of the country in the freedom to undertake, to live in an open society, to be able to act with independence of judgment and choices because they are guaranteed and supported by the autonomy of one's own enterprise and by its wealth derived from work. Read again, Brescian industrialists! Other than firing the manager on duty.
Dear Ugo, excellent analysis.