After three years of judicial investigations for alleged bribes which led to the filing of the investigation into former president Pier Francesco Guarguaglini and to his successor Giuseppe Orsi's prison and indictment on charges of corruption and which massacred the accounts of the group, it is understandable that, in the run-up to the meeting convened for Thursday 30 May, the spotlights turn on Finmeccanica, the main Italian group of high-tech industry. There are two questions that the shareholders' meeting will have to begin answering: who will make up the group's top management and whether there are reasonable hopes that Finmeccanica will be able to return to profit as early as this year and find a position on the markets that will ensure a real raise.
On the first point and barring unforeseen events, the games are already half done: there is a president to be appointed (for whom there are rumors about the former head of the PS and the security services De Gennaro and about the ambassadors Massolo and Castellaneta) while the office of managing director and general manager of the group, which for some months has been reunited in the hands of Alessandro Pansa, expires in the spring of 2014.
As for the relaunch, in addition to the first moves on transparency and a new governance decided by Pansa, it will be necessary to understand like Finmeccanica it will want to face the great challenges of aerospace and defence but also how it will want to preside over and attack the international markets it looks to and how it will be able to combine greater efficiency with greater innovation and greater technological renewal. These are problems that concern the top management of Finmeccanica but which also concern the Government and the entire country system. Even if the astonishing way in which we are witnessing the collapse of a colossus like Ilva does not bode well and even if the ideological hostility or guilty indifference with which we look at large industrial groups - which in fact are now reduced to a flicker - does not authorize illusions, if Italy wants to have any chance of relaunching it is about time it returned to thinking about the major issues of the industrial system and that Finmeccanica was not only thought of for judicial investigations and the race for appointments but above all for its industrial future.
The defense industry and the aerospace industry, beyond the gigantic investments they inspire and beyond their impact on research and development, are not just any industry and business but are real strategic assets for national interests, if the word strategic is intended to give the meaning of an asset that offers a significant contribution to GDP and which cannot be replicated. Finmeccanica has a turnover of approximately 17 billion euro, has over 67 employees with 150 operating and commercial offices and 354 production sites in 50 countries around the world and is active in the helicopter (AgustaWestland), defense electronics and security (Selex ES) and Aeronautics (Alenia Aermacchi) – which constitute its core business – and it is well positioned in the space sector (Telespazio, Thales Alenia Space), in defense systems (Oto Melara, Wass MBDA), in energy (Ansaldo Energia) and in transport (Ansaldo STS, Ansaldo Breda, BredaMenarinibus).
Being under public control and having always been the subject of political scrutiny, it is evident that Finmeccanica has accumulated too many assets and too many companies in its portfolio which distract it from its core business. Today the time has come to rationalize and to choose without looking at anyone and to sell what is no longer essential in order to concentrate investments on the activities and markets that can help the group grow and ensure adequate profitability. Finmeccanica is at the center of businesses experiencing the clash between country systems whose different dynamics need to be understood and the right industrial response to be found.
The first emergency is India where the allegations of corruption rained down on Orsi's management of the group for the supply of 12 helicopters for 560 million, together with the marine affair, risk excluding Finmeccanica from a very interesting market. But, without forgetting Australia, South Korea, Japan and South East Asia, where the Italian group has achieved important results, it is in the USA that a decisive match is being played both for Finmeccanica and for our country-system, because competing in a winning way there means first of all investing in technologies and maintaining the technological gap between the best Western companies and those from emerging countries.
Reducing costs, avoiding political interference, achieving economies of scale, continuing to invest in innovation (today Finmeccanica invests 12% of its turnover in R&D) and deciding which industrial challenge it wants to face: the bet with which Pansa's Finmeccanica presents at the meeting is exactly this. It is a bet that concerns one of the main industrial groups in the country but which closely affects our entire industrial system. It's about time Italy realized this and understood that the great strategic options come before the appointments of managers and go beyond judicial investigations.
