Quotes by Gianni Agnelli

About Gianni Agnelli:

Giovanni "Gianni" Agnelli was an influential Italian industrialist and principal shareholder of Fiat. As the head of Fiat, he controlled 4.4% of Italy's GDP, 3.1% of its industrial workforce, and 16.5% of its industrial investment in research. He was the richest man in modern Italian history.
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Italy in the first years got food, for the first year or the first periods got food. Then we got raw materials and then we got tool machines, let's say, instruments for working.

Gianni Agnelli

Now between '45 and '48, things would change enormously, 'cos we'd had credit in United States, credit from the Bank of America, credit from the Import-Export Bank and people had started working again.

Gianni Agnelli

And I don't say that we didn't expect it, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the generosity of their foreign policy; and the generosity of their foreign policy at that moment was expressed through the Marshall Plan.

Gianni Agnelli

I mean, what Fiat had it was not very big, it was something like forty or fifty million dollars, but it's enough to get revolving credit, to get starting away again, the buying of new machinery.

Gianni Agnelli

Well, the Communists at that moment were very strong in Italy and the Italian Communist Party was the biggest Communist Party outside Soviet Union, there's no doubt about that.

Gianni Agnelli

All the technology of our production was still pre-War. They were sort of '38, '39 and the War had been stable and so we were infinitely behind whatever had been going on in the United States for instance.

Gianni Agnelli

And the buying of new machinery meant not only the possibility of production, but even the new technology, 'cos as I mentioned before, we were back of seven, eight years.

Gianni Agnelli

The factories were heavily bombed, but practically the construction work had been redone very quickly.

Gianni Agnelli

Well, Italy had been overrun by the War, there had practically been civil war, north and south of the Gothic Line, heavy bombing, the northern industrial cities had been bombed heavily and we had political disorder before 1948.

Gianni Agnelli

Author Bio

  • NameGianni Agnelli
  • DescriptionItalian billionaire
  • BornMarch 12, 1921
  • DiedJanuary 24, 2003
  • CountryItaly
  • ProfessionEntrepreneur; Engineer; Politician; Businessperson