I love New York, its sunrises, sunsets, perennial chaos in 24 hours. I think it’s the city that impressed me the most since the first time I went landing on a very cold February morning in 1984. I immediately called my aunt Yolanda who lived in Brooklyn and told her that if I had time I would stop by and see her. She kindly asked me if she should call her son Arthur to pick me up in a limousine (Arthur Puccini at that time was already an important vice president in GE, the legal right hand of Jack Welch who was already GE’ CEO) I thanked her but I didn’t have time, they would come to pick me up shortly after for a morning of study in the office in the upper floors of the Twin Towers, I still have the photos of the shots from that office and in the gigantic entrance hall near the lifts. The rest of the day I spent together with other Italians with Merrill Linch managers on Wall Street. One of the things that struck me the most on that first day were the great contrasts of NY. In the evening when they invited me to a club in Manhattan, while I was in a taxy I watched the limousines go by in the very cold night stopping next to the cartoons of the homeless who slept near the puffs of steam from the sewer pipes to warm up. Extraordinary city that has left me with vivid memories since that first day.
(This post is an extract of an evolving book I’m writing about my life in business with a tentative title “Business Adventures” or sort of, yes I know outhere there’s already a great book with the same title by John Brooks 🙂)
