Highflying Ghost

Italian businessmen call Eugenio Cefis "the ghost" because of his aversion to publicity. The low-profile approach is understandable. A former anti-Nazi resistance fighter and onetime head of ENI, the government oil agency, Cefis indulges an un-Italian predilection for sandwich-and-milk lunches at his desk. In 1971, at the age of 50, he became the head of Montedison S.p.A., Italy's biggest industrial concern but a shaky one. He promptly spun off about 15% of its operations and began a series of acquisitions that made Montedison the producer of 80% of Italy's synthetic fibers, 33% of its chemicals, 10% of its Pharmaceuticals and 40% of its department-store sales. Still, operating losses in 1971 and 1972 averaged $350 million a year. Now the headlines are better for the ghost, and Montedison sales for the first six months of this year are up 16.4% from the same period in 1972. Recently Cefis turned up in Moscow to sign a deal under which Montedison will build seven chemical plants for the Soviet Union for a price of $500 million. The transaction breaks a two-year slump in Italian-Soviet trade.

With Soviet money beginning to come in, and the benefits of his reorganization taking hold, Cefis predicts, in one of his rare public comments, that Montedison, nearly 20% of which is owned by the Italian government, will be "flying high" in 1974.

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