Alitalia and Commercial Aviation in Italy

Abstract

As part of Mussolini’s drive to develop a major state-owned industrial sector in Italy, the flagship aviation company Ala Littoria was created in 1934. Mussolini’s aim was to remedy the economic instability of the early 1930s. The established policy of purely financial rescue of major industries was replaced with one of massive direct state intervention in the industrial sector, a practice that was to characterize economic development in Italy for the next fifty years. On the advice of Mussolini’s economic adviser, Alberto Beneduce, the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI) was set up and given control of the industrial shares that private banks specializing in long-term loans to industry had accumulated in the last decade of the nineteenth century, when they financed the industrial development of the country. It has been calculated that IRI came to possess 21.5 per cent of the total Italian share capital and since it was majority shareholder in 85 per cent of the companies in which it had an interest, its influence actually extended to 42 per cent of Italian share capital. ¹