ROME – Franco Tatò died at the age of 90 in San Giovanni Rotondo in Puglia. In his long career, the manager earns two titles. Many call him “the philosopher” for his studies at the Ghislieri University College of Pavia, the thesis in Theoretical Philosophy on Max Weber, the specializations in Germany and at Harvard, in the United States.
Much more popular is the nickname of “Kaiser Franz” which is attributed to him for the hardness he uses in the industrial restructuring of which he is the protagonist. In his life, Tatò is committed to leading and, at times, to heal numerous groups: from some Olivetti companies to Enel, up to the Berlusconi family businesses such as Fininvest.
Tatò works in Olivetti from 1956 to 1990 (albeit with some breaks in other companies). He arrives at the company very young and, for six months, is engaged on the assembly line of the Ivrea plant, “the most useful and formative period of my career”, he will say later.
Little by little, scale the internal positions becoming CEO of Austro Olivetti (from 1970 to 1973) and of British Olivetti, from 1974 to 1976.
His reputation as a strict and inflexible manager took shape especially when, in 1986, Olivetti asks him to refurbish the Triumph Adler (9,000 employees), which manufactures and sells office machines and computers, newly acquired by Volkswagen. In two years, the cut in unnecessary costs and a new production model make it possible to save the company.
The long period in Olivetti was interrupted between 1984 and 1986, so before the experience in Triumph Adler, when he is called to Arnoldo Mondadori Editoreof which he becomes vice president and chief executive officer.
In 1993, he was CEO of Fininvest. But the difficult relationships with Silvio Berlusconi’s closest collaborators lead him to accept the government’s invitation to lead Enel as CEO, in 1996.
In Enel he becomes one of the architects of Italian privatizations. The electricity company is listed in Milan and New York (after a strong and painful staff cut). Tatò founds Enel Green Powerleader of renewable energy, buys the Spanish Viesgo, founds Wind, the third Italian mobile telephone operator.
From August 2003 to 2014, it is CEO of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia Treccaniwhich accompanies towards a solid presence on the Net. Tatò creates the Treccani.it portal, on which all the knowledge of the Institute can be consulted for free, as well as the large dictionary of the Italian language and the biographical dictionary of Italians.
His wife next to him at the time of death, the former actress and TV presenter Sonia Raule, and daughter Carolina.
