On 6 April 21 years ago, in the late morning, the start-up contract of thesurvey of medium-sized Italian industrial enterprises. Danilo Longhi, president of Unioncamere and the Vicenza Chamber of Commerce, Giovanni Pavese, managing director of Bocconi, and Vincenzo Maranghi, managing director of Mediobanca, met in the Mediobanca Board Room for the signing. The heads of the Study Centers of the three organizations were present (Claudio Gagliardi, Giuliano Mussati and myself). I remember that immediately after leaving the fountain pen, the three signatories promptly and with great satisfaction lit a cigarette, "smoking" the room well.
Bocconi initially participated with the "Furio Cicogna" Center for Entrepreneurship Studies, then absorbed by Crea, who withdrew in 2003. From that moment on, the survey, which has always concerned the universe of medium-sized enterprises (and not a sample of them) , was carried out by Mediobanca e Unioncamere, which have put their research, processing and electronic data processing structures on the table.
The various editions were presented to the public following a fortunate format: presentation of the economic and financial results by the Mediobanca Research Department (which is responsible for drawing up the financial statements and analyzing the ownership structure), in-depth analysis of the corporate organization and analysis of the expectations of entrepreneurs by the Centro Studi Unioncamere, testimony of an average entrepreneur, comment of one or more discussing academics. Initially the latter were Bocconians; since 2003 space has also been given to scholars from other Italian universities.
The first edition was published with a presentation at the Vicenza Chamber of Commerce on 16 January 2001. It concerned the only medium-sized enterprises in the North East. In subsequent editions the survey was extended to the remaining regions. The initial project was the work of the Mediobanca Research Department. We perfected it in 1999 and immediately got the agreement of Vincenzo Maranghi, Enrico Cuccia and Francesco Cìngano. It should have concerned only the areas of the NEC (North East Centre); those that Giorgio Fuà (my unforgettable Maestro) had placed at the basis of his model of economic development in post-war Italy; in which the productive organization was predominantly of the district type, as studied by the other Maestro Giacomo Becattini. Under Dr. Cuccia's impetus, the most promising medium-sized enterprises were sought that Mediobanca could help to become great, replacing the already decadent large private companies of the time. A project that Mediobanca had undertaken much earlier, in the XNUMXs and XNUMXs, without being able to complete adequate and exhaustive empirical analyzes and without replicating the few attempted venture capital cases.
The reality we found with this new sweep was different from expectations: a set of companies that did not feel an immediate need to be financed for development. They were profitable, achieved above-average operating margins and rates of return on invested capital in excess of the return on long-dated risk-free securities. Companies that carried out the life projects of the founders who risked and still risk their own capital. In normal times they were able (and are still able) to self-finance productive investments by overcoming that bottleneck, access to financial credit, which the famous Macmillan Report believed it had identified in 1931. I financially classified them in what we called Fourth Capitalism, stealing the term to Giuseppe Turani (of course with his consent).
Over time, many medium-sized companies have enriched the list of our Stock Exchange, especially in the Star segment. However, they tend to stick around extraneous to the development logic of large companies, preferring internal growth. They look more like Toyota than the French LVMH or the American General Electric; which live a lot on acquisitions and mergers and much less on inventions and autonomous innovations. But they are very competitive and this is demonstrated by the positive balance of our trade balance. The balance between exports and imports of Italian manufactured goods, still in 2020 (year of pandemic and great international difficulties), was positive and equal to just under 100 billion euros. It can be estimated that more than nine tenths of this figure comes from the goods produced in the district areas by medium and small enterprises "contaminated" by the Fourth Capitalism. Goods for the person and the house and light mechanics (now mechanical-electronic) and related services. On the other hand, what remains of the large private enterprise still shows a growing loss of competitiveness caused by the lack of insistence on innovations and therefore on productive investments, sacrificed with respect to financial ones, while further heavy restructurings appear to be upon us.
Medium-sized businesses are local system integrators, which make up the majority share of our manufacturing industry. This will be the one that will have to contribute more to development and, in the future, to support new generation projects. This must be taken into account. The Mediobanca and Unioncamere survey identified territories, productions and protagonists. This is an essential cognitive heritage for any recovery project that wants to be effective and based on concreteness. It would be paradoxical if this investigation by Mediobanca and Unioncamere were abandoned today by sacrificing it to the opportunistic needs of a few financial speculators who, for their purposes, no longer see any use in the Research Area of Enrico Cuccia's bank.
