ROME – In the slippery world of Italian state-controlled industries, politically appointed managers come and go as fast as the governments that appoint them.
But at the age of 74, Fincantieri CEO Giuseppe Bono is heading towards yet another mandate after threats to his leadership from a government party were thwarted, proving again that he is the ultimate canny survivor after 17 years on the job.
The soaring results racked up by the Italian shipyard last year did no harm to the veteran’s standing. Figures released this week showed that Fincantieri’s enormous €34 billion ($39 billion) backlog of work, pushed by naval and cruise ship orders, is now equivalent to 2 percent of Italy’s GDP.
The recent challenge to Bono’s job came when a junior government minister suggested the CEO should work alongside a new co-manager. Pointing out that Bono was over 70, Stefano Buffagni said, “We need a medium- to long-term plan that mixes experience with change in a positive way.”
Buffagni is a member of the Five Star party, which as a partner in Italy’s governing populist coalition has sworn to bring fresh blood to Italy’s major state-run firms.
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Political tinkering with senior management at major players like Leonardo, formerly known as Finmeccanica, has not always produced positive results. In 2002, politicians looking to put their own nominees in the board room got two men appointed to jointly run the defense giant— Pierfrancesco Guarguaglini and Roberto Testore.
The co-existence of the two men soon proved unworkable and Testore was jettisoned.
Appointed to run Fincantieri in 2002 after a spell running Finmeccanica, Bono has to date survived the tinkering of a stream of Italian governments as he built up the shipyard into a major force, managing to keep yards open up and down Italy, from Sicily to Trieste, pleasing politicians with local constituencies to worry about, as well as local unions.
In 2015, the firm was the beneficiary of a massive €5.4 billion ($6 billion) Italian navy ship order, which insiders put down to a lucky combination of having a navy chief determined to renew the fleet, a defense minister, Roberta Pinotti, who hailed from Genoa - close to Fincantieri yards — and a need to manage the sailing of thousands of migrants across the Mediterranean.
Last year’s results, announced at the end of February, saw revenue rise 9 percent to a record €5.5 billion ($6.2 billion) in 2018, with €1.43 billion ($1.6 billion) from naval work – an 18 percent rise over 2017.
While the firm continues to build Littoral Combat Ships with Lockheed Martin at its U.S.-owned yard, Fincantieri is also pitching its FREMM frigate to the U.S. Navy. The firm lost out in its bid to sell the frigate to Australia, but is now seeking to sell corvettes to Brazil and Romania.
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It has not all gone Bono’s way. His dream of brokering a deal with France’s Naval Group to integrate their yards is struggling as Italy’s populist government picks fights with Paris over who should accept migrants, and a plan to buy Italian electronics firm Vitrociset was scuppered by Leonardo, which stepped in to buy the firm.
But Fincantieri has meanwhile scored a coup on the home front by branching out into bridge construction as part of the team rebuilding the Morandi bridge in Genoa, which collapsed last summer. Speedy work on the politically sensitive project will likely rack up more political points for Bono in Rome.
Signs that the CEO would be able to fight off the move by Five Star to install its own man alongside him came on Feb. 27 as Fincantieri held a ceremony in Trieste to mark the start of work on a series of new naval vessels for Qatar.
Speaking on the same day, Fabrizio Palermo, who runs the state investment body which controls Fincantieri, strongly praised Bono, hardly surprising since he used to work at Fincantieri under the veteran CEO.
Then, the following day, deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, who is the head of Five Star’s governing partner, the League, was even more forthright in his defense of Bono.
Asked about the reconfirmation of Bono as sole CEO, he said, “You don’t change a winning team,” adding the government needed to “recognize who is doing a good job and move on.”
The same day, it was reported that Five Star was backing off and prepared to leave Bono in charge, in exchange for being able to install new board members of its choosing at a crunch meeting this week.
“For me, Bono is reconfirmed,” Salvini said on Monday.
Tom Kington is the Italy correspondent for Defense News.
