Roberto Rocca was born in
Milan, in 1922, as the eldest son of Maria Queirazza and
Agostino Rocca. The elder Rocca was an engineering apprentice who would later become a member of the board of directors of the
Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI), the centerpiece of the
corporate state advanced by
Fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini. During World War II, Roberto Rocca enlisted in the
Italian Navy, serving from June 1942 until September 8, 1943, as a
Second Lieutenant in
naval engineering on board a submarine. He graduated as
mechanical engineer at the
Politecnico di Milano in July 1945, though seven months later, the family left Italy for
Buenos Aires, Argentina. His father's new establishment,
Techint, prospered during the administration of populist President
Juan Perón, and Rocca enrolled at
MIT, earning a degree in science at the end of 1949. Agostino Rocca died in 1978, leaving his elder son as chairman and CEO. Techint was, by then, a conglomerate with 15,000 employees, two steel manufacturing facilities in Argentina and with international engineering and construction interests. Buffeted by problems in the Argentine economy during the 1980s, Techint expanded its Latin American activities. Techint participated in the
privatization drive adopted by President
Carlos Menem in the early 1990s, purchasing a majority stake in Argentina's then-leading steel manufacturer, the state-owned , in 1992. Techint bids for two electric utilities serving the Buenos Aires area came in second, however. Relinquishing the presidency of Techint to his elder son, Agostino, in 1993, he became president of Siderca in 1996, as well as of
Dalmine, a steelmaker based in
Bergamo, Italy, acquired in 1996. In 1998,
Konex Foundation from Argentina, granted him the Diamond
Konex Award for Institutions-Community-Enterprizes as the most important businessman in the last decade in his country. The family was shaken by the April 28, 2001, aviation death of Agostino Rocca, president of Techint and Roberto Rocca's successor. Agostino's younger brother,
Paolo Rocca, was appointed to the post. Subsequently, Siderca was listed on the
NYSE, and Techint's steel operations, the group's centerpiece, were reorganized as
Tenaris in October 2002, basing the subsidiary in Luxembourg and converting Techint into a holding company. A patron of the arts and philanthropist, Rocca served as Vice President of the
Mozarteum Argentino, Honorary President of the
Círculo Italiano and Honorary Member of the Institute for Industrial Development (IDI), all prominent
non-profit organizations in Argentina. He was elected the first chairman of Tenaris, but died in his native Milan, on June 10, 2003, at the age of 81. Growing alongside the Argentine economic recovery that followed, Siderca's steel tube shipments grew from 2.5 million tons in 2003 to 4.5 million in 2008. == Influence on education ==