Guido Donegani
| Guido Donegani | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
26 March 1877 Livorno, Italy |
| Died | 16 April 1947 (aged 70) Bordighera, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Occupation | CEO and Chairman of the Board |
| Known for | Prominent Italian businessman leading the Italian chemical industrial giant Montecatini. |
Guido Donegani (26 March 1877 in Livorno – 16 April 1947 in Bordighera), was a prominent Italian engineer, businessman and politician. He was CEO and President of the Italian chemical industrial giant Montecatini from 1910-1945. Due to his support to the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini he was arrested at the end of the Second World War, but acquitted of charges of collaboration.
Donegani was born in the port city Livorno. The Donegani family was part of the Livorno business elite involved in maritime transport and import and export activities. He studied industrial engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin where he graduated in 1901. The next year he was elected in the provincial council of Livorno.
After he had lost his wife, Anna Coppa, a few months after their marriage in 1904, he became the Commissioner of Public Works of the City of Livorno (1905-1908) in which capacity he helped to solve the long-standing problem of water supply in the city.
Both his father Giovan Battista Donegani and his uncle Giulio Donegani were involved in the Montecatini Mining Company (Società Minerarie Montecatini), which had been founded in 1888 at Montecatini Val di Cecina in Tuscany and was active in mining copper pyrite. Through a series of complicated agreements with Italian banks and French investor groups, the Donegani’s exercised a decisive role in the ownership of Montecatini.
In 1910, after the death of his father and the acquisition of Unione piriti – the major Italian pyrite producer – Guido Donegani became the CEO of the company. The same year he moved the headquarters of the company from Livorno to Milan. From that time until 1945 the fate of Donegani and Montecatini would become inseparable. He became Chairman of the Board of the company in 1918.
Under the dynamic leadership of Donegani, Montecatini would become the largest chemical company in Italy in the Interbellum. During World War I, the company acquired a decisive interest in the production of sulphuric acid, an important ingredient for the production of gunpowder. Montecatini also diversified into power stations and acquired the two largest produces of super-phosphates in Italy to become the countries leading fertilizer producer. In the decade 1910-20 over 40 plants producing fertilizers and essential chemicals were established in Italy, controlling respectively 70 and 60% of the domestic market of super-phosphates and sulfuric acid.
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