$500 Million Sideline

Franco Marinotti, 66, is a stout, energetic Italian who considers painting his lifework and business a mere sideline. As a painter, whose work bears the name Francesco Torri,* he has achieved critical acclaim throughout Italy for his craftsmanlike landscapes. But it is at his sideline that Franco Marinotti excels. As president of Milan's mammoth Snia Viscosa, he has almost singlehanded turned a tottering business into one of Italy's ten largest corporations and one of the world's biggest textile combines. Last year, with 60 plants turning out textiles in seven countries, Snia Viscosa was worth $500 million, had boosted production to a record high; sales totaled $120 million, profits $8,000,000. Last week the company added still another profitable asset: a $5,000,000 chemical plant at Varedo, in northern Italy, to produce 45,000 tons of sulphuric acid annually for Painter Marinotti's booming sideline.

Distress Call. Snia Viscosa has been a one-man outfit almost since the day Marinotti appeared in Milan 28 years ago. Born on the Venetian plains, he had already won a reputation as a hustling textile salesman, first working for Italy's Cascagni Seta mills, where, at 23, he was manager of all the company's mills in Czarist Russia, later as boss of his own worldwide trade corporation. In 1929 Marinotti got a distress call from Societa Nazionale Industria Applicazione Viscosa, onetime shipping company turned textile manufacturer. Snia Viscosa, overcapitalized and overinflated at the 1929 crash, had all but collapsed.

Marinotti rushed back to the company's headquarters in Milan, slashed stock par value, cut excess payroll, closed down inefficient plants. Snia Viscosa soon became a profitable proposition--and has remained so ever since. Though Marinotti pushed production for Mussolini, he was thrown in jail for defying the Germans. Released, he went into voluntary exile in Switzerland, wrote poetry and painted while the Allies bombed Snia Viscosa into ruins. After the war, at the pleading of stockholders, he returned to Milan and pledged every penny of his personal fortune (by then well into the millions) to rebuild the firm.

Oldtime Pitchman. As it turned out, Marinotti's hard-driving leadership was more than enough for the job. Unlike other war-stricken Italian firms, Snia Viscosa never took a penny in American aid. Marinotti sold the company's skyscraper headquarters in Milan, converted other negotiable assets into cash, trimmed payrolls and expenses. Without going into debt or accepting government handouts, Snia Viscosa was producing 55,000 tons of fiber annually by 1947 (present production: 135,000 tons annually). But with productive capacity vastly greater than Italy's consumer market, Snia Viscosa had to export or topple of its own weight.

Peddling his yarn like an oldtime pitchman, Marinotti personally established new markets in India, South Korea and Russia (where his ability to outdrink the Russians proved a great advantage). To get around customs barriers, he set up subsidiaries in Spain, France, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. To cut rising costs, Snia Viscosa spent more than $30 million on new plants, pushed production of its own raw materials, power and machinery. Marinotti expanded the company's experimental research center, put 400 technicians to developing a full line of artificial fibers to compete on world markets.

Renaissance Man. Today Snia Viscosa is the world's largest exporter of textile fiber. With growing foreign markets, Marinotti cut prices 6% to 10% last year in a bid to increase the firm's sales in Italy as well. Result: sales in some lines jumped as much as 40%. Marinotti is now dickering to build new plants in India, Germany and the U.S., will soon travel to the U.S. to push American sales and promote a virtually tearproof synthetic paper called Papertex (TIME, July 15).

With a personal fortune of at least $20 million in Snia Viscosa stock and other assets, Textileman Marinotti dreams of forsaking his sideline for his main interest. "Art," he says, "is the only explanation for life." He has visions of a retirement spent painting, writing poetry, cooking (favorite dish: chicken `a la Strogoff) and collecting the great art of the past. But Artist Marinotti is too much of a businessman for that.

* Meaning "towers," for the towering factories and office buildings he has built as an industrialist.

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