Italy

"Early on we were predominantly European, with two thirds of our profits coming from this large, sophisticated market. Germany, Belgium, Norway and France led the way. We struggled with competitiveness in Italy and withdrew. The UK has been a disappointment. Skills are not what they were, energy is expensive, unions have been aggressive (unlike Germany, where the unions focus on encouraging employers to invest for future growth), although to be fair they have been much more constructive and willing to engage in proper discussions about the genuine health of our businesses over the last ten years, and the government has been uninterested or lacklustre at best. America has been resurgent on the back of world-beating energy costs and frankly fine management. Whereas Europe has slowly squeezed the life from much of its manufacturing base with carbon taxes, complex legislation, high labour and social costs, America has gone into overdrive."

"The possibility that Italy, where about 80% of the world's luxury products are made, could become a French province is real. Just take a tour of the industrial districts of the sector, from Tuscany to Puglia, to find subcontractors who produce exclusively for the French cousins."

"During an era of low interest rates, when aggressive acquirers crowded the private market in Sweden, Lifco shifted its focus to less competitive markets such as the UK, Germany, Italy, and the Benelux region. This international expansion has been a significant success, and Lifco has been able to acquire companies of at least the same quality in terms of operating margins at the same prices."

"In Clermont-Ferrand, the old Carmes workshops and the Estaing storage center, built on the eve of the war, were joined in 1924 by the gigantic Cataroux factory, today still the largest in the group. Outside of France, over the years and protectionist regulations, Bibendum has established itself in Great Britain, in Stoke-on-Trent (1927), opened a spinning mill in Italy (1927), and expanded in Germany in Karlsruhe (1931). It’s a lot."

"Thanks to countless industrialists from all backgrounds, obscure or famous inventors multiplying mechanical, electrical, aerodynamic improvements, the automotive boom continues. France is the leading car producer on the European continent and — by far — the largest exporter. In 1907, French manufacturers produced more than twenty-five thousand cars (they quintupled their production since 1900), twice as many as Great Britain (twelve thousand), nearly five times as many as Germany (five thousand one hundred fifty), ten times as many as Italy (two thousand five hundred)."

"Antoine Bernheim's admiration for the Italians who did everything to rescue French Jews from their oppressors dates back to this time. This personal memory will influence his view of the transalpine relationship for a long time. Although he doesn't always understand Italian business culture, Antoine Bernheim feels that he owes a debt to Italy."

"YOU started from nothing, you conquered everything you could dream of: you climbed to the top of the world in the sector you had entered as the last of the workers, you rang the bell at Wall Street, you bought Ray-Ban – all of Ray-Ban –, you're the richest man in Italy, you have a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, a yacht in Monte Carlo, a villa on the French Riviera, buildings across half of Europe, a charming villa in typical Caribbean style in Antigua, you have a new partner – the third –, you have a newborn child with her and another on the way, in addition to a child of not even ten years from your previous wife and three grown children who are living their lives. You are approaching your seventies."

"Angelo was born into a family of "pettener," as the peasants from Belluno who spent the long winter days, free from work in the woods, making combs from the horns of cattle were called, artifacts that they would go down to sell in the city squares of the plains. Ancient rituals handed down through generations, skilled work performed by men in front of the hearth. Precision work, where it takes time, patience, and perseverance. Like making frames. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in Italy, as in France and also in Japan, the optical industry was born in mountain countries, where time expands and distractions are reduced, allowing craftsmen to become masters of the technique."

""One must have the courage to do things. In Italy, few have it. We stop; we do not grow. We are great craftsmen, great artists, but often we stop there.""

"The expansion of the tricolor eyewear does not go unnoticed overseas. Local workers in the sector protest, calling for measures to curb the dominance of European competitors, asking for customs duties and restrictive measures to limit the import of lenses and frames from Europe. By the end of the sixties, Italy has reached the level of France and aims at the continental primacy of Germany. Every year, Italian factories produce no less than twenty-five million pairs of glasses, with over a third of them being exported for a value of 18 billion lire."

"Luxottica becomes the largest user of New York's John Fitzgerald Kennedy airport, where planes loaded with frames arrive from Italy to be immediately distributed to every corner of America."

"He was told by Tom Bata, the world’s biggest shoe manufacturer, that Italy, which manufactured the finest shoes in the world, did so by way of home industries – it had three million of them, flourishing in the heart of cities like Rome and Florence. This obviated the counterproductive system of establishing factories far from residential areas, compelling workers to get up at five in the morning, travel at great cost to their workplaces and return home weary round nine at night. ‘I want to hope that when we do development in black homelands,’ he said, ‘we would allow the black people to run businesses in their backyards and garages.’"

"Rupert saw the country’s future as lying not in mass production, but in production by the masses – as had happened in South Korea and was also the case in Italy."

"(1) It should be remembered that Ettore Bugatti built up his busi- ness and equipped his experimental workshops by his own unaided efforts. He never received subsidies of any kind, unlike his chief foreign competitors who were given considerable financial help by their gov- ernments, notably in Italy and Germany. As for his aeroengines, during the war, they had not brought him a fortune."

"So, who was this Flavio Carboni? In appearance, there was little about the Sardinian that indicated anything extraordinary. He was a short, dark-haired man in his 50s, who made a polite and charming first impression on everyone he met. Many were deceived by the friendly twinkle in his eyes. Only much later would some of them understand that the twinkle could transform into a furious and piercing gaze in a matter of seconds. On the surface, therefore, nothing indicated Carboni's role in one of the biggest financial scandals in Italy's history. His name had become strongly linked to the bankruptcy of the country's largest privately owned bank. Before this scandal, Carboni was one of Italy's wealthiest men, with interests in over 130 companies. The Sardinian lived a life of luxury, with 53 luxury cars and three private planes. Now, his fortune was "frozen" in several legal disputes, and in the background loomed an alleged suicide under Blackfriar's Bridge in London four years earlier."