Ansaldo

Ansaldo was one of the oldest and most important engineering companies in Italy, working for 140 years between 1853 and 1993. It was founded in Genoa as Gio. Ansaldo & C. by a group of Genoese businessmen that included Giovanni Ansaldo, Raffaele Rubattino, Giacomo Filippo Penco and Carlo Bombrini. In its first decades it made and repaired railway components, grew into a firm of some 10,000 workers with seven factories, and then moved into shipbuilding and general mechanical work. After Ferdinando Maria Perrone bought it in 1904 the company pursued strong vertical integration in iron and weapon making, and it swelled during the First World War, when it also built aircraft. The Perrone family left in 1921 and the Banca d'Italia organised a rescue. The company then passed under the state holding body IRI and later Finmeccanica, handed its shipbuilding to Italcantieri in 1966, and ceased to exist as an independent entity in 1993. Its products included warships, ocean liners, aircraft, armoured vehicles and locomotives.