Are you one of us?

How la raccommandazione rules Italy

There’s an excellent article over at the Telegraph by Michael Mosbacher, which, among other things, reveals what one already knew, and gives some hard evidence for what we have all suspected: London is a place of opportunity, in a way that other places are not. He writes:

“Speak to European professionals in London and you will often hear the same story. They would never have achieved in their own countries what they have in London. If you are not in an inner clique, they will tell you, your chances of advancement are small. Ability is simply not enough. To give an example, Antonio is a 50-something Italian who is a principal at a leading hedge fund with an income to match. But his childhood was very different from that his own children enjoy. He grew up in a run-down working class district of a southern Italian city. His father worked as a waiter and barman.

“He will tell you, even with his excellent economics degree from a decent Italian university, he would never have advanced in his home country beyond a mid-level managerial position. Back home, boys like him simply don’t get the opportunities they do here. It is London that has enabled him to grow rich.

“And this story is replicated again and again by Europeans working in our banks and investment funds. We romanticise European family-owned businesses, but they also reduce opportunity.

“Take Alessandra. Her family established a bank in northern Italy a few hundred years back, and it retains a controlling interest. Having been exposed to the ways of London, Alessandra has become exasperated by the bank’s recruitment practices. People are hired simply because they carry the family name.

“Over the centuries, the family has grown vast and there is always a distant cousin looking for a sinecure. The pattern extends down the bank, and non-family jobs also seem to be passed down from generation to generation. You are unlikely to become a doorman there if your father wasn’t one.

“When Alessandra remonstrates with the senior family members running the bank, the same answer always comes back. If we were recruiting on talent, we would probably be doing better, but not that much better. You can also hire complete duds by open recruitment, you know.”

Here are a few observations on my part.

Both exemplars are Italians, which is certainly no coincidence. One is from the North and the other from the South. One might assume that the North, the place that more or less invented business in the modern sense, would be more open to talent, less oligarchical. But whether it is North or South, to get on in Italy, you need 'la raccommandazione’, the backing of someone who is already inside to get you inside as well. You have to be a member of the family, or a member of the group. Otherwise, you are shut out forever. That is, quite simply, how Italian business works.

It goes further: that is how Italian society, as well as the Italian Church and the Vatican work. If you know the right people, and they like you, you will get on. Don’t hang around thinking your talents will be recognised. They won’t be. It is this that is at the heart of the Mafia phenomenon: the Mafia are the excluded who form their own ‘families’ to overcome the stigma of not belonging to the right families in the first place. And this is the case not just in the South, but in the North as well, which may explain the remarkable success the 'Ndrangheta has had in Lombardy.

Italy, where I lived for eight years, is a classless society in a way that Britain is not. It is not wracked with social snobbery, for a start, but there are social divisions that a Brit hardly notices, the invisible divisions between the haves and have-nots. In Sicily, historically, this division was between landowner and landless peasant, between city-dweller and country-dweller, between the tiny educated class and the illiterate. These divisions may have disappeared, but what is still present is the sense of exclusion that came from these divisions.

It is a pity that Mosbacher in the article I quote has anonymised his sources. One would love to know which southern city Antonio grew up in. One imagines a place like Bari or Taranto, where, if you come from the wrong side of the tracks, you can never be allowed to forget it. And as for Alessandra’s banking dynasty, yes, it is true, if you are a relation, you will get a job, whether it is a bank, a restaurant, a hotel, a shop, or even just minding a market stall. One looks after one’s own and fends off outsiders. This will not change in our lifetimes, hence the bright and ambitious must leave the country or take less orthodox routes to influence and power. La raccommandazione or the lack of it determines your fate in modern Italy.

One last thing: on every Italian business there is always someone (perhaps more than one) who is not up to the job. You may complain about this person’s stupidity or laziness, but the answer will always be the same: ‘Ma, lui e stato raccommandato.’ ‘But he was recommended.’ He came with someone’s backing, and he cannot be fired, and that is just the way it is.