Fabrizio Di Michele0:22
Bonasera, it's a big pleasure to welcome to the Consulate General of Italy in New York our very important and dear Luca Maestri and Maria Teresa Cometto for this evening of a big getting together about Italy, innovation, about the strength of our top Italian managers who are having such a big success in the US. I really want to give a very warm personal welcome to Luca to this room, which we call Pat Italia. This is the room where we always welcome the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister of Italy, and also the many times the young people, young Italians in New York, the new Italians as we call them, the new migration. So in a way, for us to welcome you here it's very natural because you are a VIP and you are a young manager, young talent. So I think you combine all the things we want to do in this very room. So Luca, you are the CFO of Apple. What shall I add? You're the CFO of a big empire who, I think you were just telling us, controls nearly 1% of the world trade. The figures of your company are comparable to many European countries put together. So you have the power and the influence of a governor of a big central bank. In many ways, in the European media they compare your influence to the one of Governor Mario of the European Central Bank. I think that you have brought to Apple your Italian genes, that's undoubtedly. You have brought your Italian education, you're a product of the Italian schools of famous Italian licei, as many of the people who are in this room who are having a big success in New York. And you have brought also, of course, your big university career, you are a LUISS graduate. We all know here there are many LUISS graduates, we know that, and we are supporting a lot this growing international side of the LUISS University. In a word, you have brought to Apple and to all the other companies you work for Italian culture, Italian style of life, the Italian soft power. And that leads me to say that you are the kickoff personality of a series of interviews and conferences organized by the director of the Institute of Culture, Professor Giorgio Van Straten. The interview will be made by Maria Teresa Cometto. There will be several of them in the next month. Let me especially thank our director of Cultura because one day he organizes a conference on Italo Calvino, on his famous Memos for the Next Millennium. By the way, there's one about lightness that I think we should organize a conference in Certino next time because I don't know why, but maybe all of you agree that we associate lightness with Apple. And then the next day you organize an exhibition on paintings of Venice and of Italian design. Your very active and enlightened role, I think, is contributing to promote here in New York a contemporary picture of Italy, of how it is. We are a big country with a big past, but as I like to say every day here and every night, we are a country with a big present and with a terrific future. Precisely because we have a big past, we are better equipped than other countries to live the future. So I think these conferences will help to strengthen this concept. Last but not least, let me stress three things that I think could be very important tonight, and I'm sure that it will come out from the interview. You are Apple, you are innovation. I think the choice you made last year to invest in Italy, in Naples, is an expression of how much you believe in Italy as an innovation country. So I'm very happy that you are here, that you will be able to explain through the help of my some aspect of this choice. The second thing I want to stress here is that you are at the Italian Consulate General of Italy in New York. It's like the city hall for the Italians in New York. We issue passport documents, certificates. It's not the only job we want to do, that's why you are here, that's why we organize many conferences, and we want to open the doors. But what we have in common with, if I may say so, with Apple, is the obsession for quality, for customer care, for the users. I think maybe they all agree that we have still room for improvement here at the consulate, but be sure that we have, like you, the same obsession for quality and for giving services to our clients or users. I read a fantastic interview you made with an Italian newspaper where you say that you are an empire of services and you were focusing on the concept of service. Third, last but not least, I think I'm particularly proud that you are here in this room because another common concept of our action here is to try to show, to display to our community, to our dear New Yorkers friends, how much the Italians who have key roles in the US, in New York, have a very high sense of their civicness, of their being Italian. And you are maybe the first of all them. In this interview with La Repubblica, you said very beautiful things about the giving back to Italy, about thinking maybe in a future to have roles in Italy. I think this is very important because it means that we have this very bad and unfortunate expression 'chi fugge', no one is escaping Italy. You have Italy inside, and we are very proud of that. Thank you, Luca. I think without further ado, I don't want to spoil the evening. We have to begin, and I'm sure that the interview will be brilliant. Be sure that here the audience is hungry and foolish to listen to you and to learn from you.
