Roberto Olivetti
 Roberto Olivetti    (businessman) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 18 March 1928 Turin, Italy |
| Died | 27 April 1985 (Age 57) Rome, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Ethnicity | Jewish |
| Alma mater | Bocconi University, Harvard |
| Parents | Adriano Olivetti |
Italian businessman who attended Bilderberg/1968. Electronics division in hostile takeover by General Electric after his father murdered in 1960, possibly by the CIA. | |
Roberto Olivetti was an Italian businessman, who was one of the main architects of the transformation of Olivetti from a metalworking company into electronics. He attended the 1968 Bilderberg meeting.
The electronics division of Olivetti was scooped up in 1962 by General Electric in a hostile takeover managed by Aurelio Peccei, after his father Adriano Olivetti was murdered in 1960, possibly by the CIA.
Contents
Background
Roberto Olivetti was born in Turin, the eldest son of Adriano Olivetti, owner of the homonymous company at the time producing mechanical calculators, and his first wife Paola Levi (sister of Natalia Ginzburg). He has two biological younger sisters, Lidia and Anna, and a one-sided younger sister, Laura Olivetti, daughter of his father and his second wife Grazia Galletti.
Education
Roberto graduated in 1952 in Business Administration from Bocconi University in Milan and specialized at Harvard University in business administration in 1954. Having joined his father's company in 1955, he followed with interest the pioneering developments in Italian electronics at the Olivetti laboratory in Barbaricina, near Pisa, which he helped to found from the beginning and to support later on; in 1959 he became director of Olivetti's Electronics Division.
He married Vittoria Berla in 1957, but the marriage lasted only one year. In 1960 he married actress Anna Nogara, with whom he has a daughter Desire.
Father murdered by CIA
The Olivetti company, primarily known for its typewriters, was a major Italian business that survived two world wars. The company, run by a string of men in the Olivetti family — Camillo, Adriano, Roberto — was also the producer of one of the first functioning desktop computers.[1]
According to biographer Meryle Secrest, Adriano Olivetti in 1960 and Mario Tchou, a leading engineer for the company, in 1961, both were murdered. These deaths created the conditions for a hostile takeover of Olivetti by General Electric, which spelled the end for Olivetti's influence in the electronics field.[1]
Adriano was ruled to have died of natural causes at 58 when he had a heart attack on a train, but Secrest notes that the "doctor could not be sure and recommended that the family order an autopsy. Most accounts ignore the uncertainty and state this verdict as authoritative." No autopsy was ordered. Secrest references a documentary produced by Michele Soavi, Adriano's nephew, wherein Adriano's guard says bluntly: "I know that he was murdered." Secrest offers a theory as to by who, and how: "Curiously, the CIA created a particularly handy weapon for [train] corridor use: the poison gun, one that mimicked a heart attack." After his death, as his office was ransacked during the funeral. Later, a prototype of the revolutionary Programma 101 was stolen.[1]
Olivetti's leading engineer Tchou died in a car crash in 1961.
Career
Some time after the death of his father, in 1960, he acquired a greater role in Olivetti, and became CEO (together with his cousin Camillo) in 1962. The financial difficulties of the company in that period meant that this position soon went to Aurelio Peccei, supported by the new financiers of the company just entered: it is in this period that the sale of the Electronics Division of Olivetti to the American General Electric is carried out. Between 1962 and 1964 he remained in close contact with the group of engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, who was developing the experimental project of the Programma 101, which found in Roberto a supporter of the project.
Olivetti was in the management group of the Adelphi publishing house.
In 1967 Roberto returned to be CEO of Olivetti (until 1971), but this time not alone, because he was joined by Bruno Jarach. In 1971 he also left this post, but remained Vice President of the company and then a board member.
In parallel, Roberto Olivetti supported numerous cultural projects and foundations. In 1976 he ran for the [Italian Republican Party]], of which he was a supporter[2]. From 1982 he became president of the Olivetti Foundation, until his sudden death in 1985. Two years earlier, in 1983, he married, for the third time, Countess Elisa-Maria Bucci Casari.
Event Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilderberg/1968 | 26 April 1968 | 28 April 1968 | Canada Mont Tremblant | The 17th Bilderberg and the 2nd in Canada |
