Autostrade as A.T.M.

The family’s first step into this new realm was perfectly timed. Italy was still emerging from a brush with bankruptcy and it badly needed cash to reduce debt to swap the lira for the euro.

An ambitious push was underway to privatize a variety of industries. Seventy different transactions would ultimately net more than $100 billion. Founded in 1950, Autostrade was one of the last major state properties put up for sale.

The Benettons led a consortium of investors that paid 2.8 billion euros, worth about $4.5 billion in inflation-adjusted terms, for a 30 percent stake in the company. The rest was sold to the public, through the Italian Stock Exchange.

Far from winning through connections, as Five Star politicians have claimed, the Benettons easily beat out the lone rival bid, led by an Australian bank, which sought a mere 10 percent of the company.

There simply was not much interest in Autostrade, scholars say, largely because the regulatory framework looked daunting. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport had clear control over both inspections and toll rates. At least on paper.

“Any investor would have been worried about bidding,” said Carlo Scarpa, a professor of economics at the University of Brescia, in northern Italy. “The Benettons, though, knew the system and they understood that the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, which was supposed to supervise the whole thing, was weak. They were able to calculate the weight the company would have in the political arena.”

Italy was so desperate for cash that it was ready to strike a deal on very generous terms. There were price caps on tolls, but they were derived using a system described by Giorgio Ragazzi, a retired professor of economic science at Bergamo University, as “highly discretional.” And the contract lasted until 2018, later extended to 2038.