Changing Finmeccanica's name to Leonardo was not a happy idea, and Fabiano Fabiani, the unforgettable number one in the aerospace and defense group in the 24s, did not tell her in an intriguing conversation with Paolo Bricco in today's Sole XNUMX ore. “It was a mistake to change the name to Leonardo after the legal troubles, for everyone it remains Finmeccanica” claims Fabiani and in fact even today Finmeccanica is better known by its old name than as Leonardo. Fabiani isn't angry with Leonardo's current CEO, Alessandro Profumo, also because the name change was decided by Mauro Moretti, but he is keen to punctuate the "i". Even if, as is obvious, the conversation with Bricco in the successful column of the Sole "At table with" certainly does not end in the dispute over names.
The Etruscan, as Fabiano Fabiani was called in his heyday due to his origins from Tarquinia, ranges from Rai, where he began his activity until he became Director of TG 1 - his children still remember when he woke up in the mid-August night of '68 in the holiday home in Fregene to hurriedly set up a special edition for the invasion of Russian tanks in Prague - up to Finmeccanica, of which he was the very powerful CEO, without hiding his relations with the DC and especially with Ciriaco De Mita.
There is a whole world which, for better or for worse, is unforgettable and which Bricco outlines very well by faithfully reporting the thought of Fabiani who today – at the age of ninety worn splendidly – enjoys his family between Rome and Capalbio and looks with serenity and skepticism today. But curious is above all the memory of the relations, friendly but ended stormily, between Fabiani and the then director of the Treasury Mario Draghi and their disputes on privatizations - which Draghi solicited and which instead Fabiani, who cultivated an expansive project, held back - and on Finmeccanica accounts.
But the testimony on the sale of Alfa Romeo to Fiat is also not to be missed. which Fabiani managed in 1986. “Alfa's corporate finance – says Fabiani – was in serious disarray. However, Ford wanted to acquire it to restore it and enter Italy. Avvocato Agnelli and Cesare Romiti made a better financial offer and the decisive meeting in New York with the bankers in charge of evaluating the two offers lasted no more than fifteen minutes. The Alfa was sold to Fiat which had made the best offer but it is not certain, as Sergio Marchionne later recognised, that it was good for Italy and for Fiat itself. But this is now history.
