Guido Donegani

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.

Early life Donegani was born in the port city of 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.

Montecatini 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. 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. 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. After the war, Donegani transformed Montecatini from a mining company into chemical one, with a primary focus on agriculture.

Supporting the Fascist regime Donegani strongly supported the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. In 1921 he became a member of parliament for the National Bloc, which aggregated the Italian political right – including Mussolini – and which was absorbed by the National Fascist Party in 1924. After the March on Rome in October 1922, Donegani proclaimed that: "When in October 1922 the blackshirts arrived at Rome, we industrialists rejoiced and welcomed Benito Mussolini's government that gave back to the state and its laws the necessary authority."