Trade: Italy to Russia

TRADE Italy to Russia In the Volga town of Togliatti, Fiat is building a plant for the Russians that will eventually turn out 600,000 cars a year. Last month Pirelli concluded a $50 million deal to make rubber parts for the Fiats. Italy’s state-owned ENI petroleum company is ready to build a pipeline from the Ukraine to Trieste. Olivetti is in the midst of talks to supply the Soviet Union with office equipment. Almost weekly some new deal is announced in which an Italian company snaps up a contract in Russia. The man most responsible for all of this is an Italian, Piero Savoretti, 46, who for years has labored patiently to sell Italian products in Russia.

Savoretti first visited the U.S.S.R. in 1954 as a representative of Britain’s Lamberton & Co., maker of rolling mills and forging presses. Before leaving for Moscow, he suggested to several Italian businessmen that he might seek out commercial opportunities for their companies. The Italians were interested—but, at that point, the Russians were not. “I discovered that the Soviet Union was an important market,” says Savoretti, “but that Italy was known for its music and art and literature—not for its industry.”

The Waiting Game. Undeterred, Savoretti returned to Moscow two years later, this time to stay. In 1956, he became the first Western businessman in residence, doggedly making the rounds of Soviet officials and fighting the gloom of Moscow hotel life. On the strength of his contacts,^ he came to arrange tours for more and more Soviet trader delegations to visit Italy.

Before Fiat Chairman Vittorio Valletta (who died last summer) clinched his company’s automaking deal, for example, some 48 Soviet groups of experts journeyed to Turin to see what makes Fiat run.

Savoretti landed his first contract, for $1,600,000 worth of grinding machines, a long, tough year after he set up headquarters in the Hotel National facing Red Square. Almost two years were to pass before two synthetic fiber plants worth $40 million were ordered through his services from Chatillon in Italy. Then things started picking up with contracts for six 50,000-ton tankers for Savoretti’s client Ansaldo, followed by others and culminating in the Fiat deal, the largest the Soviets ever made with a Western firm.

Prize of Adaptability. Russians are rough customers, says Savoretti. “They have enormous skill in playing the competitive game, in playing one offer against another. They turn around and around, and finally they arrive.” And he finds that the international competition in Moscow is getting more intense as others learn the benefits of setting up shop there.

Yet, the man who showed the way sees even greater possibilities for Italians. For one thing, the Italian government has been helping to promote business with Russia with liberal ten-year credits at 51% to 6% interest, v. the current 8% commercial rate. More important, according to Savoretti, “we Italians have a psychological affinity for adaptability. Our capacity to adapt has served us well in Russia.”

Today Savoretti represents some 50 Italian firms as exclusive agent or in some other capacity. They include Fiat,

Pirelli and Olivetti and a proud roster of other Italian manufacturers. He collects substantial retainers or commissions on sales from his customers and spends seven months of each year looking after their interests in Moscow. The rest of the time he lives in Turin with his wife, the former Nina Ivanovna Firsova, a onetime Intourist interpreter, and their two children.