After a quick profile of Italian foreign direct investments since 1900 and a short review of the main explanations of the lagged multinational growth by Italian manufacturing companies, a quick glimpse of business histories is given to the only two still today living "old protagonists" (Pirelli, Fiat) and to three old corporate groups (Olivetti, SNIA Viscosa, Montecatini-Montedison) who had also reached a significant degree of full internationalization early in the XX century, but during the second postwar period underwent profound dismantling of their original business mission. Finally the paper focuses on few cases of "new protagonists", mid-size family companies who undertook a true multinational strategy only in the most recent decades and today represent the core of the Italian "fourth capitalism".
Published in 2013 in: G. Toniolo (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Italian Economy since Unification, Oxford University Press, New York 2013
