Alberto Beneduce

Alberto Beneduce (29 May 1877 – 26 April 1944) was an Italian politician, scholar and financier, who was among the founders of many significant state-run finance institutions in Italy.

Alberto Beneduce
Born29 March 1877
Caserta, Kingdom of Italy
Died26 April 1944(1944-04-26) (aged 67)
Rome, Kingdom of Italy
NationalityItalian
Alma materUniversity of Naples
Years active1900s – 1940
Political partyItalian Reformist Socialist Party
Children
  • Anna
  • Idea Nuova Socialista
  • Italia Libera
  • Vittoria Proletaria
  • Ernesto
Minister of Labor and Social Security
In office
4 July 1921 – 26 February 1922
Prime MinisterIvanoe Bonomi
Preceded byArturo Labriola
Succeeded byArnaldo Dello Sbarba

Early life and education

Beneduce was born in Caserta on 29 March 1877.[1] He earned a mathematics degree from the University of Naples.[1]

Career and views

Beneduce was a socialist[2] and was a leading member of the Italian Reformist Socialist Party.[3] He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1919 and 1921 representing the party from his hometown Caserta.[1] Beneduce managed to connect with high finance figures and to collaborate with the Italy's fascist regime.[4] He worked in different capacities, including statistician, teacher, demographer, agricultural and insurance specialist.[4]

He was a university professor of statistics and demography until 1919.[5] He contributed to the establishment of the national institution of insurance (INA), which was founded in 1912.[5] He also headed the INA from 1912 to 1919.[1] During World War I, he was asked to established an institution that would help the veterans in finding jobs. As a result, he involved in founding the related body, Opera Nazionale Combattenti (ONC).[5] In the period between 4 July 1921 and 26 February 1922 Beneduce served as the minister of labor and social security in the cabinet led by Ivanoe Bonomi.[1]

Beneduce was appointed head of two state-run credit bodies: Consorzio di Credito per le Opere Pubbliche (Crediop) in 1919 and Istituto di Credito per le Imprese di Pubblica Utilità (ICIPU) in 1924.[5] Until 1939 he headed both institutions.[5] These institutions were later merged under the name of Istituto per il Credito Navale.[6]

In 1931, he was named as a board member of the Istituto Mobiliare Italiano.[5] He also served as an economic advisor to Benito Mussolini.[7][8] In 1933, he was appointed by Mussolini as the head of the institute for industrial reconstruction (IRI), being the first president of the body.[4]

In 1936 he was simultaneously president of IRI, of the public credit institutions Crediop and ICIPU , of the Institute for Naval Credit, and a member of the Board of Directors of IMI and of the National Foreign Exchange Institute while in the private sector he was president of the Italian Society for Southern Railways. He served in the post until 1939[9] when he became a senator in 1939, but he retired from politics and other public offices due to his health problems in 1940.[4]

However, he retained his membership on the boards of various companies until his death.[4] He was an advocate of a company management approach based on the private-sector criteria and free from political influences.[3] Beneduce was also a director of the leading companies, including Fiat, Pirelli, Montecatini, Edison and Generali.[3]

Activities

Beneduce and Luigi Rossi recorded detailed statistics about Italian citizens, who had migrated to the US, but returned to Italy between 1905 and 1906.[10] Beneduce was instrumental in the nationalization of life insurance in Italy.[11] His activities in the finance sector of Italy shaped the industrial development of the country between the 1920s and the 1990s.[5] One of his significant activities in this regard was the reorganization of the bankrupted Italian banking system. In addition, he was the mentor of many eminent financiers and technocrats, who reconstructed Italy after World War II.[5] He also developed Mussolini's deflation policy.[12]

Personal life and death

Beneduce had five children, three of whom were given names that reflected his socialist orientation: Idea Nuova Socialista, Italia Libera and Vittoria Proletaria.[13] The other two children of him were Ernesto and Anna.[1] One of his daughter, Idea, married Enrico Cuccia, a significant financier.[14][15]

Beneduce died in Rome on 26 April 1944.[16]

Awards

Beneduce was awarded the Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy on 16 November 1918 and the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Crown of Italy on 5 January 1922.[1]

References
  1. "Dati anagrafici". Senato della Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 21 September 2020.
  2. Franco Amatori; Pier Angelo Angelo Toninelli (2012). "Does a model of Italian state-owned enterprise still exist?". In Franco Amatori; Robert Millward; Pier Angelo Angelo Toninelli (eds.). Reappraising State-Owned Enterprise: A Comparison of the UK and Italy. New York; London: Routledge. p. 49. ISBN 978-1-136-73829-6.
  3. "Beneduce, Alberto". Dizionario Biografico (in Italian).
  4. Roland Sarti (2009). Italy: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: Fact on File, Inc. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-8160-7474-7.
  5. Henry W. de Jong (2007). "Introduction to Market Theory and its European Pioneers". In Henry W. de Jong; William G. Shepherd (eds.). Pioneers of Industrial Organization: How the Economics of Competition and Monopoly Took Shape. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 100. ISBN 978-1-84720-696-1.
  6. Peter Hertner (1994). "Modern Banking in Italy". In Manfred Pohl (ed.). Handbook of the History of European Banks. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 570. ISBN 978-1-78195-421-8.
  7. Franco Amatori; Andrea Colli (December 2000). "Corporate governance: the Italian story" (PDF). Targeted Socio-Economic Research. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015.
  8. Lorenzo Castellani (2023). "Alberto Beneduce, a Technocrat in the Fascist Era". Contemporary European History. doi:10.1017/S0960777323000140. ISSN 0960-7773.
  9. Leonardo Giani (Fall 2008). "Ownership and Control of Italian Banks. A Short Inquiry into the Roots of the Current Context". Corporate Ownership & Control. 6 (1): 87–98. doi:10.22495/cocv6i1p9. S2CID 152472860.
  10. Dino Cinel (1982). From Italy to San Francisco: the immigrant experience. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-8047-1117-3.
  11. Richard J. Samuels (2005). Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy And Japan. Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press. p. 136. ISBN 978-0-8014-8982-2.
  12. "The Depression". Historical Boy's Clothing. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  13. Vito Avantario (2002). Die Agnellis: Die heimlichen Herrscher Italiens (in German). Frankfurt/Main; New York: Campus Verlag. p. 179. ISBN 978-3-593-36906-8.
  14. Alessandra Stanley (24 June 2000). "Enrico Cuccia Is Dead at 92; Key Figure in Italian Banking". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  15. Vera Zamagni (2009). "Governing the Italian economy: a comparative perspective". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 14 (1): 46–51. doi:10.1080/13545710802642883. S2CID 145770682.
  16. Andrea Pitzalis (2009). "Il giovane Alberto Beneduce: gli anni della formazione intellettuale tra la politica e le aspirazioni accademiche (1904-1911)". SPE: 45–76. doi:10.3280/SPE2009-001003.
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