Arrigo Olivetti

Arrigo Olivetti (born in Biella on 22 November 1889, died in Ivrea in 1977) was an Italian business executive and liberal politician. He belonged to a different branch of the Olivetti family than the company's founder line, and was both brother-in-law and first cousin of Adriano Olivetti. In the 1950s he served as managing director of the Olivetti company, where he was a sharp critic of Adriano's welfare-oriented management and of his Movimento Comunita, though Adriano later rallied the family around his own ideas and overcame the critics Arrigo led. Outside the firm he was a liberal and a leading figure among the Amici del Mondo, the circle around the liberal magazine Il Mondo, which helped found the Italian Radical Party in 1955; in 1959 he became the principal owner of Il Mondo and was elected party secretary alongside Francesco Libonati and Leopoldo Piccardi, and they resigned after the Piccardi case of 1961. In 1960 he and the former Ghia president Luigi Segre founded the Turin coachbuilder Officine Stampaggi Industriali, and in 1968 he founded and became first president of the Centro Pannunzio in Turin.