Who would have imagined that what most surprises foreign investors in Italy is not its public debt, which is also the third largest in the world, but something more impalpable? Yet what impresses them more than anything else is the widespread antipathy that a manager of the caliber of Sergio Marchionne enjoys in our country. Whoever reminds us of this is not just any observer but one of the most attentive of Italian events: Bill Emmott, former director of the Economist and author of a highly successful book such as "Come on, Italy - How to start again after Berlusconi". In the latest issue of "L'Espresso" Emmott wrote a comment of great interest and highly topical that all political and social forces should read and meditate on and that already in the title goes straight to the heart of the matter: "Nemo Marchionne at home ”. In short, Marchionne's (very low) approval rating in our house as a test of Italy's political orientations and social and cultural trends. Ultimately, the desire of Italians to grow or to remain in the deadpool of recession and stagnation.
If until recently – says Emmott – foreign investors wondered “why Italians continue to vote for Silvio Berlusconi”, today they wonder “why Sergio Marchionne, who is considered a hero in Detroit, is so detested in Italy”. And they often don't know how to answer. It may also be true that the CEO of Fiat, the man who inherited a technically bankrupt company five years ago and today has made it into an industrial reality with a thousand problems but who is winning the American bet and is back in the game, has serious communicational limitations and he made more than one mistake in union tactics. But it would be too simplistic to think that the answer could be this. "It is surprising - Emmott writes again - that so many Italians have such a negative opinion of the man who leads one of the most important and oldest manufacturing companies in the country" despite often showing the pride of belonging to a country which is the second largest manufacturing Europe after Germany. “And even stranger is the fact that this large manufacturing country produces fewer cars in a year than the United Kingdom”. Yes, we produce fewer cars than Great Britain, which has finance rather than industry as a vocation: why?
The widespread antipathy that Marchionne collects in Italy, "particularly among the elite media, is - in the eyes of the Germans, the British and the Americans - the symptom of something that could prove to be very dangerous: that Italians are not really interested in economic growth ” and that Italy hasn't really embraced modern capitalism and isn't interested in welcoming those who want to do business.
Emmott is absolutely right. Today Marchionne is, perhaps despite him, the litmus test of Italian sentiment. The problem, of course, is not transforming Marchionne into a saint, but understanding what arouses so much aversion towards him: whether it is his person, whether it is Fiat or whether it is the innovative challenge which, like it or not, Marchionne has launched despite the opposition from a large part of the trade unions, political forces, public opinion, the media and – what is even more shocking – in the indifference of Confindustria and its leaders. The point is this: it is right for the country to ask Fiat and the few other large national companies what they are willing to do for Italy, but on the condition that they ask themselves a second question and ask themselves what our country is ready to do to keep them, enhance them and attract them to our area. In other words: in an industrial country like ours are large companies a luxury, an option or a necessity and a source of development? Thank you Emmott for reminding us and for forcing us to think about these truths. But thanks also to Marchionne for having challenged the conformity that is condemning Italy to mediocrity with unpopularity. Of course, the methods of the Fiat CEO can always be debated, but the substance of the productivity problems, the certainty of the behavior of the various parties involved and, ultimately, the rules of the game that Marchionne raises is not hiding his head in the sand that we will take a step forward towards a brighter future.
