Abstract

The Author has analyzed the consolidated annual reports of the major Italian companies in the past decade and has compared them with similar multinational companies and with the financial aggregates of the industry. With reference to FIAT Auto, the Author has found that in the recent years this Company has lost capability of competing from a technological standpoint with its foreign competitors. This factor has then weakened the financial situation of the Company. The strategy chosen by Enichem of leaving the productive vertical integration in favour of an outsourcing of numerous activities has not brought any benefit to the company in terms of profitability. The economic recovery efforts realized during the period 1996-1998 by Alitalia have been made useless by the same Company between the end of 1999 and the end of the first half of 2001, both in terms of economics and financials and of productivity of labour. In the recent two years Olivetti has managed Telecom Italia introducing efficiency, but hasn't done technical investments enough. Furthermore, Olivetti has created a situation of indebtedness that is unsustainable for Telecom Italia. Without considering revenues coming from video- and radio-licence fee and without the costs related to the public function of the company, in the nineties Rai's profitability was in line with Mediaset, its Italian competitor.