Constantly seeking a crazy ride

Roberto Colaninno was born in the north Italian city of Mantua 67 years ago, and still lives in the same house he has always lived in, with his wife Oretta, a schoolteacher. Even though he spends most of the week travelling, he tries to come back to Mantua at weekends.
“I enjoy living here,” says the stocky, self-effacing businessman who detests being photographed and studiously avoids the parties, yachts and conspicuous consumption favoured by many of the Italian business elite.

Indeed, he looks a bit uncomfortable hosting a party of celebrities in the stylish new Milan showroom of Piaggio, the scooter company he now heads.
Do you ride a Vespa or a Moto Guzzi? “Not on your life,” he quickly answers in his characteristically straightforward and slightly abrupt way in a sleek designer conference room above the new showroom.
“You know, I am a very insignificant man in Mantua. I cook at home, ride my bicycle and lead a very ordinary life,” he adds, in what many would consider a blatant exercise in false modesty.
For Mr Colaninno is not only one of Italy’s best-known dealmakers. He also likes to shoot for game. Once a year he goes shooting in Patagonia, and when he is not shooting birds in Argentina he hunts for bigger corporate game.
This provincial Italian, who qualified as an accountant, shot to fame a decade ago when he pulled off what was at the time the world’s largest hostile takeover. Along with a band of north Italian investors, he launched a highly leveraged bid for the recently privatised Telecom Italia in 1999. A couple of years later his associates forced him to sell control of the telecoms group to Pirelli, preferring to cash in their chips rather than pursue the Telecom Italia adventure. “I wanted to continue running the company but I had no alternative but also sell my stake when these partners decided to get out,” he says – but he shows little regret.

The CV
Born: August 1943 in Mantua, Italy
Education: Trained in accountancy while studying economics at university
Career: 1969 Joins auto components maker Fiaam and becomes its CEO within three years
1981 Founds car parts group Sogefi
1996-2001 CEO of Olivetti. Under his leadership, Olivetti in 1999 launches the world’s largest-ever unsolicited takeover bid for the recently privatised Telecom Italia. Mr Colaninno becomes chairman and CEO of Telecom Italia from May 1999 to July 2001 when control is passed to the Pirelli Group
September 2002 With other investors, acquires Immsi and turns it into a quoted vehicle for investments, the most notable of which is Piaggio, acquired in 2002, and Aprilia
2008 Leads CAI, an investor group that has brought together 20 of Italy’s leading entrepreneurs and Air France-KLM, in the takeover of Alitalia and Air One to create a new Italian airline under the Alitalia banner. He is both Chairman and a major investor in the new company
Interests: Lives in Mantua with his wife Oretta, a schoolteacher. Has two sons, Matteo, a politician, and Michele, who works in the family holding

After all, Mr Colaninno is the first to admit he was lucky. The day after the sale to Pirelli, the world and the financial markets were plunged into crisis. It was September 11 2001.
Mr Colaninno had become a very rich man and could easily have decided to retire in his provincial haven away from the international limelight. But he is not the retiring sort. Far from it. For behind his rather staid and conventional demeanour, Mr Colaninno is a corporate maverick. He admits he likes risk and “the anxiety” of tackling an ambitious and what some might regard as a “crazy” industrial undertaking.
“I don’t need to work for the money. I work because I want to do something and prove myself. In any case, if you do not work you become old in a very short time.”
So, soon after leaving Telecom Italia, Mr Colaninno was already contemplating what he himself calls another “crazy” scheme. He turned his attention to Fiat, the country’s largest industrial conglomerate, which was at the time on the ropes. “I made them a proposal to take over the group,” he confirms. But the Agnelli family turned him down. As a result he decided to make a pitch for an “even crazier” deal.
In 2002, he acquired control of Piaggio, the scooter manufacturer that was on the verge of bankruptcy. By comparison to Fiat, Piaggio was an industrial midget, but Mr Colaninno says the risks were much greater. “Taking over Piaggio was crazier than Fiat because the company was in even worse condition and if Piaggio disappeared it would not have been a national problem as the eventual demise of Fiat would have been.”
Piaggio had been owned by Umberto Agnelli, the late brother of Fiat patriarch Gianni. It had subsequently been acquired by Morgan Grenfell but the private equity house had struggled to revive the old maker of the famous Vespa scooters. Based in Tuscany at Pontedera, near Pisa, the company was also plagued by particularly difficult labour relations given that Piaggio’s unions were among the most intransigent in Italy.
But Mr Colaninno has always had a knack of dealing with complicated labour relations. He started his career running car component companies and at one stage was put in charge of reviving a filter company jointly owned by his Mantua-based Sogefi car parts group and Allied Signal, the US conglomerate. The company, called FRAM, was based in Slough in the UK. “A horrible place,” he recalls, “but I lived at the time in the Red Lion hotel in Henley, which was very nice.”
“We were in the early 1980s in the Thatcher years and I had to deal with 32 different trade unions. We had plants in Wales and at Slough, opposite the Mars factory. The company employed close to 4,000 people. We got a guy from Barcelona to run the business as a managing director, so imagine what these unions thought – an Italian flanked by a Spaniard coming to revive the business!”
Mr Colaninno asked the unions to give him a year to prove he could turn the business round. If they agreed to his conditions to improve productivity and avoid going on strike, the company would commit substantial new investments. “We achieved our targets, the company started making a lot of profits, we honoured our investment commitments and I ended up receiving a medal from the trade unions.”
It is this same approach that he has since undertaken at Piaggio. “As long as you explain to the unions what is the state of play, and they usually know better than management, and then tell them what you want to do, you can usually reach a good understanding. But never, never adopt an arrogant stance.”
At Piaggio the strategy has been to expand rapidly in Asia, especially in India, China and Vietnam. “Asia today is more important than Italy and Europe for Piaggio. That is where the future of our sales lie,” he says. He rattles off a number of statistics but by far the most interesting is the world demand for scooters. “Total global demand is 44m. Europe accounts for 1.7m; the US is about 700,000; South America another 3.5m; and all the rest is Asia. So the future is clearly Asia.”
With Piaggio back in profit, Mr Colaninno decided it was time to invest in another “madcap” project – leading a group of investors to take over Alitalia and the smaller Italian airline Air One to create a new national flag-carrier under the Alitalia brand. “If you are not going to be crazy in your life, what is there, and what is the meaning of your life?” he says, adding that he has always been “fascinated” by the airline business.
Rescuing Alitalia would continue to secure him a place at the top table of Italian business and Mr Colaninno, for all his assumed modesty, likes to sit at the top table. Once again, he deployed his skills in labour negotiations and finally secured a deal with the company’s tough unions after four gruelling months of talks. He agrees that this is a risky business and laughs at the old joke that if you want to make a small fortune you should invest a large one in an airline.
But once again he has been lucky. The airline market is recovering and Alitalia is expected to break even next year. The unions also seem to be playing their part. “Since January 2009, when we took over, and today, we have only had eight hours of strike. That is far better than our big French industrial partner Air France-KLM (which has a 25 per cent stake in the Italian carrier) and indeed British Airways. In 2007 alone, Alitalia faced 132 hours of strike.”
Does this imply that Mr Colaninno is ready for another “crazy” challenge? “I don’t think so,” he says, acknowledging that perhaps he is beginning to get a little old. In any case, he would hardly have enough time to devote to another industrial adventure.
“You want to know my schedule? In a normal week, I spend Tuesday and Wednesday in Pontedera at Piaggio. On Thursday I am in Rome with Alitalia. Friday is for whatever issue comes up. Saturday, Sunday and Monday is Mantua. Then, once a month, I make a long-distance trip either to India, China or Vietnam. And in July, I take a week off in Patagonia to shoot. That is sacred.”