Edison

Edison S.p.A. is an Italian electric utility company headquartered in Milan. The company was established in 1884 and acquired by Electricité de France in 2012. Edison employs more than 5,000 people in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The chairman of the board is Luc Rémont (CEO of EDF) and the chief executive officer is Nicola Monti. History Early history (1884-1966) Founded in 1884 by Giuseppe Colombo in Milan, Italy, as "Società generale italiana di elettricità sistema Edison", it served the purpose of introducing and applying Thomas Edison's inventions to Italy. Indeed, Colombo, an engineering professor, was a great admirer of Edison, whom he had met in the United States in 1881, securing an exclusive licence for some of his patents for Italy and hiring some of his collaborators. Edison operated the Santa Radegonda power plant, Europe's first power plant. In the following decades, Edison continued growing, especially in hydroelectric power, and came to control power distribution in most of northern Italy. In 1962, the centre-left coalition government of Christian Democrats and Socialists decided the nationalisation of the electric sector in Italy, to break the oligopolistic power of the four dominant electric companies that then dominated all the national market. With the compensation money it obtained from the state, Edison, then headed by Giorgio Valerio, invested heavily to diversify its activities, primarily in the petrochemical sector and by buying the Standa supermarkets chain, continuing producing power only for self-consumption. This strategy was unsuccessful, though, as competition with both state-owned Enrico Mattei's giant Eni and Montecatini, a large private chemical company, proved too hard, so in 1965, Edison was eventually forced to merge with Montecatini, forming Montedison, the largest chemical company in the country.