This week Family Business Office, for its fourteenth edition of Focus On World Business Leaders , brings you Emma Marcegaglia, Chief Executive at World Business Leader in production of steel tubes business and second generation business.

Emma Marcegaglia was born in Mantua on December 24, 1965. She attended elementary school Gazoldo degli Ippoliti (MN), where the headquarters of the companies of Marcegaglia S.p.A., an industrial group active in the processing of steel founded in 1959 by her father Steno, are located. She attended junior high school and scientific high school in Mantua, graduating in 1985. Her studies continued at Bocconi University in Milan, where she obtained a degree in Business Administration with full marks in 1989, finally completing a Masters in Business Administration in New York.

The “steel lady” as she is affectionately known by her fellow Italians, Marcegaglia took over from her father as chief executive of the steel processing company he founded in 1959. She combines running the 100% family-owned business with her brother which she has successfully managed growing revenues and profits, and also heads the Italian business lobby group Confindustria.

She immediately began working in the Marcegaglia group where the management, the owners and the board of directors have always been under the guidance of the family. Emma works alongside her brother Antonio taking care of the administrative and financial part.

In January 1990 her father asked her to follow Albarella S.p.A., of which the Marcegaglia group bought 100% of the shares. Albarella is a private island located in the lagoon south of the city of Venice. Located in the Po Delta Natural Park, connected by a bridge to the mainland, the island measures 5 km in length by 1.5 in width: it is over 500 hectares covered by the Mediterranean scrub. The island has two million trees of 150 different tree species, including the maritime pine and the white poplar “Populus Alba”, from which the island takes its name. Emma works side by side with KTMG, the auditing firm that carries out an analysis of the company situation, in Albarella, which operates in the tourism and hotel and real estate management market.

With a steely determination, starting from 1991, she launched new strategies that brought the company back to the positive and at the same time improved the quality of the product. In the meantime, a new structure was created within the Marcegaglia group, the financial services office, dedicated to the management of the group’s treasury: it is Emma who chose to direct it, taking care – for all group companies – of the management of relations with banks, market activities, government and corporate bonds.

Together with her brother Antonio she is CEO of the group and of all the subsidiaries; her father Steno holds the position of president instead.

Emma has also held the positions of vice president of Confindustria for Europe, national president of the Young Entrepreneurs of Confindustria, president of YES (Young Entrepreneurs for Europe), vice president of Confindustria with responsibility for energy and for the coordination of industrial and environmental policies. For her active engagement in Confindustria in March 2008 she succeeded Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, as president: she is the first woman ever to lead the General Confederation of Italian Industry.

Reference material obtained from Forbes.com, Biografie.com

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