Through a series of complicated agreements with Italian banks and French investor groups, the Donegani's exercised a decisive role in the ownership of Montecatini.

[3][4] In the decade 1910-20 over 40 plants producing fertilizers and essential chemicals were established in Italy, controlling respectively 70 and 60% of the domestic market of super-phosphates and sulfuric acid.

[1][2] During the war, the company expanded into explosives for their mining operations, becoming Italy's largest supplier of munitions taking control of the country's industry.

"[5]He lauded the violent fascist squads for restoring the order and linked the future of sales of fertilizers to the end of post-war social agitation.

[3] As Mussolini's personal emissary, he carried out a mission abroad to reassure the international business community about the good intentions of the new fascist regime.

[5] The ties with the Fascist regime benefited the Montecatini company substantially, in particular during the conversion from wartime production of munitions to peacetime expansion of fertilizers and modernization of agriculture.

[3] The harmony between business and the regime reached its peak when Mussolini declared the necessity for economic autarky in a speech to the National Assembly of Corporations in March 1936.

[1] At the end of the 1930s the company experienced an accelerated growth: the capital, more than doubled between 1936 and 1939, the number of employees reached nearly 60,000, and the consumption of electricity one tenth of the national total.

[1] Despite the relative dispersion of ownership, some constraints from major shareholders and political circumstances, Donegani nevertheless determined the entrepreneurial strategies of Montecatini and its subsidiaries.

After a brief inquiry he was handed over to the National Liberation Committee (Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale - CLN) – the former partisan coalition that formed the provisional government – which accused him of collaboration with the Fascist regime.