I worked with Alberto Mucci for most of the seventies. He had recently become director of the newspaper born from the merger between Il Sole, mercurial centenary of the Milanese business community, and 24 Ore, born after the war to talk about economics and finance with a more modern and unscrupulous spirit. Mucci was a good journalist who, after graduating in Rome, had received complete training in the field in Milan, where he had woven a network of acquaintances not only in the Assolombarda circles, which would later turn out to be fundamental for making a change in economic information. Il Sole 24 Ore was then taking its first steps.
It was a small and very technical newspaper, so much so that colleagues from other newspapers did not consider its editors real journalists. The titration was as aseptic as possible, like the Montedison assembly. Not much attention was paid to beautiful writing. The news was given only if it fell on you. But after 68 the traditional world had taken the road of decline. Even Confindustria with the Pirelli reform had started a renewal. They were years of social and economic crisis, but while the crimes of the BR occupied the scene, great news was born in the world of information. In the economic field, with the emergence of a wider market, there was a need for competent but reliable and transparent information.
And that's exactly what Mucci did. It has laid solid foundations for the growth of a modern newspaper of the Italian economy, gradually freeing itself from the constraints of belonging to its own publisher and aiming to represent all aspects of the Italian economy, from banks to artisans, passing through professionals, accountants and lawyers, for whom the pink sheet became an indispensable work tool. I still remember when he took us to see the lawyer Agnelli, recently president of Confindustria, to whom we asked, bluntly if the industrial association wanted to have a bulletin to advertise its ideas, a sort of party newspaper, how 'they were Il Popolo or L'Unità, or if they were willing to support our attempt to create a major newspaper of the Italian economy, free from the strict obligations of observing the Confindustria line.
Agnelli did not hesitate to choose this second option. He didn't know what to do with a house organ, he wanted Italy to take a leap forward also in the quality of information. A line maintained by Confindustria for almost thirty years and then questioned by President D'Amato who instead wanted to use the newspaper as an "instrument" of Confindustria's policy. An error due to ignorance and partly responsible for the crisis from which the paper is only now beginning to emerge. Alberto Mucci guided this transformation with courage and a firm hand. He hired young editors, initially hampered by the laziness of those who "always did it this way".
The introduction of a union news page, for example, created an uproar in more conservative industrial circles. But now the transformation could not be stopped. Inconvenient news also began to be published, space was given to various political voices, behaviors and decisions were criticized, without looking anyone in the face. I can cite two episodes in which I was the protagonist. The first concerns the criticism that I addressed to Giordano dell'Amore, the sacred monster of Italian bankers and patron father of the Ca' de Sass, on the impossibility of continuing to defend the prices of the land registers, the pillar of savings for the Milanese.
And shortly afterwards, in fact, that wall fell and the bank had to review its entire way of operating. The second concerns Paolo Baffi, governor of the Bank of Italy, towards whom we all had an almost reverential respect, but whom we criticized because in homage to a practice always followed until then according to which the banks' balance sheets could never be loss, was struggling to spread the truth about the situation of the Banco di Napoli. We argued that transparency is an indispensable value and that the sanction that would have come from the market to administrators who had brought the balance into the red would have been an effective cure for adopting the necessary corrective measures.
Also in this case Baffi was convinced of the legitimacy of our opinions and the Banco di Napoli came out, in the general bewilderment, with the balance sheet in the red. The public followed this transformation with interest, so much so that under Mucci's direction Il Sole 24 Ore went from about 40 copies to 100 in 1978. I still have the medal commemorating this milestone. Then Alberto Mucci the following year was attracted by the Corriere della Sera siren, which at the time was the most coveted point of arrival in the career of any journalist. It wasn't a happy experience.
Alberto found himself in the middle of the dark hands of P2, and without any fault or involvement, he was slowly marginalized so much that less than three years later he resigned to pursue a career in the BNL research office, continuing to write above all on specialized magazines. Mucci was a valuable journalist. He had solid moral principles and a great humanity that made him a natural point of reference for all editors and for many people who knew him and loved him. The one written by Alberto is an unforgettable page not only for those who worked alongside him, but also of great importance for the advancement of Italian society.
