Italy: Politics Is His Business

The Milanese are the go-getters of Italy. From the lowliest shopkeeper to the wealthiest industrialist, they are so proud of the industrial glories of their fast-growing city that some of them talk facetiously of a “republic of Milan.” An Italian magazine recently suggested that the republic already had its first ambassador to the U.S. He is wiry, sharp-faced Piero Bassetti, who, at 34, not only runs his family’s sizable, 140-year-old textile business, but also is one of Italy’s most active and controversial politicians. As a member of Milan’s city council and the city assessor, Bassetti is a chief mover behind a massive redevelopment project that will reshape and expand Milan at a cost of $650 million over the next four years and an eventual cost of $1.5 billion.

Standing in Line. As the front runner in Italy’s economic boom, Milan has swelled in population by 24% in ten years. It boasts 37% of all Italian businesses, pays 24% of the nation’s taxes, accounts for one-fifth of all its wages and salaries. To relieve its inevitable growing pains, Milan hopes to annex 94 surrounding communities, redevelop its crowded city center, build a complex of subways and expressways and expand housing, health services, schools and sanitation facilities. Once Milan decided on this ambitious course, the problem was where to borrow the money—and how to convince the rest of the world that Milan was all its citizens said it was.

Piero Bassetti approached the Manhattan investment firm of Dillon, Read for a $20 million loan to start off the project, aware that a commitment won from it would impress financiers around the world. After two months of investigating the Milanese economy, Dillon, Read approved the loan at a 1% lower interest rate than Milan could have got in Italy. “They’ll soon be standing in line to lend us money,” crowed the triumphant Bassetti—and he was right. Last week the line was growing, with British and Swiss bankers at its head.

Something New. A onetime Fulbright scholar (at Cornell) and Olympic track star, Bassetti studied at the London School of Economics and taught economics at Milan’s Bocconi University before entering the family business when he was 26. He shocked his conservative relatives by setting up workers’ councils to share in management decisions, took over the textile operation when his father retired in 1954. Since then he has shocked almost everybody. After winning a seat on the’ city council, he pushed tax reform, tried to have Milan’s trolley fares doubled to cover deficits. A Christian Democrat who says, “I am a leftist because I am modern,” he spurred Milan’s own apertura a sinistra by persuading the party to form a coalition with the socialists.

Many Italian businessmen consider Bassetti a Red, sneer at his plans for Milanese redevelopment as too elaborate and socialistic. Bassetti works a 16-hour day seven days a week at his textile business and council duties, and disregards his critics. “I believe I represent something new in Italy,” he says. “A businessman with a social conscience who’s willing to work in public life to solve the problems of our time.”