Giovanni Battista Pirelli

Giovanni Battista Pirelli
Born(1848-12-27)27 December 1848
Varenna, Italy
Died20 October 1932(1932-10-20) (aged 83)
Milan, Italy
OccupationBusinessman
SpouseMaria Sormani
ChildrenAlberto Pirelli, Piero Pirelli
RelativesLeopoldo Pirelli

Giovanni Battista Alberto Pirelli (Varenna, 27 December 1848 – Milan, 20 October 1932) was an Italian entrepreneur, engineer and politician, and the founder of the Pirelli company in Milan.[1] In 1919 he was the president of Confindustria.[2]

Early life

Pirelli, the son of Rosa Riva and Santino Pirelli, was the eighth of ten children. His father was a baker, and died when he was eight years old.[3] Pirelli attended the Polytechnic University of Milan.[4]

Career

After his graduation, his professor Giuseppe Colombo, who was an entrepreneur as well as an academic, financed his travels to Germany and France to learn about manufacturing.[3] He identified rubber manufacturing, a new business at the time, as a promising industry to bring to Italy.[4] In 1872, he founded the Pirelli company,[4] using both private capital and bank loans,[5] quickly expanding the business by opening factories in Spain and in North and South America.[4]

References

  1. ^ "Giovanni Battista Pirelli | Italian industrialist | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2025-08-28.
  2. ^ "PIRELLI, Giovan Battista - Enciclopedia". Treccani (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-08-28. dal luglio al dicembre del 1919 fu anche presidente della Confederazione generale dell'industria italiana - Confindustria
  3. ^ a b Kaika, Maria; Ruggiero, Luca (2024-12-03). Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization. Univ of California Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-520-41008-4.
  4. ^ a b c d Garcia-Ruiz, Jose L.; Tominelli, Pier Angelo (2015-10-06). The Determinants of Entrepreneurship: Leadership, Culture, Institutions. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-32355-6.
  5. ^ Pérez, Paloma Fernández (2024-12-23). Global Family Capitalism: A Business History Perspective. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-27178-0.