So, there we were, enjoying the festive break far away from it all in rural Tuscany. This was a time to enjoy the good red wine, relax and look benevolently out over the Chianti hills, far from the madding crowds. This was a time to stand still and take stock.
For some of our fellow guests in Tuscany, however, taking stock had a rather more literal meaning since it meant a cellphone call to their stock broker, just to check out the latest market movements. Around the communal dining table, Italy's leading financial daily, Il Sole 24 Ore, was in great demand as anxious investors surveyed the market.
If there was one interesting socio-economic development in Italy in 1999, it was the arrival of the small private investor in the marketplace. Take Silvio, for example, one of our fellow guests, who would regularly leave the table early and head to his bedroom to call his broker.
Silvio is a Naples-based, doctor, someone who in the past would probably have invested his savings in government bonds, otherwise known as BOT. Once upon a time, BOT and other government bonds earned an annual 810 per cent interest and were a fundamental part of Italian household husbandry, so much so that the millions of investors were whimsically referred to as "BOT people".
In the last year, however, Silvio has shifted his attention and moved to the Milan stock market where a series of "careful" investments have earned him more than £30,000 (€38,092).
Nor is Silvio alone in his thinking. With government bonds now yielding an average 3 per cent annual return, the private investor has jumped enthusiastically at offers such as last November's initial public offering of 35 per cent of shares in state-controlled electricity giant, ENEL.
A record 3.8 million Italian savers plus a host of international institutional investors jumped onto the ENEL bandwagon, in the process pushing the overall market capitalisation of companies listed on the Borsa Italiana to £448 billion, thus seeing Milan overtake Amsterdam to become Europe's fifth largest stock market.
Not for nothing did economic commentators label the ENEL privatisation (or semi-privatisation, since the state still retains a 65 per cent controlling interest) an historic moment for Italy.
Economic commentators, especially non-Italian ones, like to express concern and scepticism about the Italian economy. The Paris-based International Herald Tribune recently commented: "Italy's performance has assured no one. It has lagged as an economic factor, moving behind the business cycle of the other `Euroland' economies."
It is true the Italian economy is among the most sluggish in the euro zone, expected to return a GDP growth figure of, at best, 1.3 per cent for 1999. Unemployment, too, remains high at 11 per cent nationally, touching 21.3 per cent in many parts of the south. Furthermore, Bank of Italy governor Mr Antonio Fazio forecasts a growth rate of 22.5 per cent for the next two years, thus suggesting no immediate respite in terms of unemployment.
Inflation data for December, released on Tuesday, came in at 2.1 per cent, making Italy the first of the major economies to breach the ECB's 2 per cent inflation limit. The rise was mainly driven by the increase in oil prices.
Set against those figures have been better than anticipated budget results which suggest that the 1999 budget deficit/GDP ratio (one of the celebrated Maastricht criteria) will come in at 1.9 per cent, lower perhaps than both France and Germany. This good result contrasts with the government's own predictions last May that it might overshoot to as much as 2.4 per cent (prompting a minor row with EU partners). The sale of ENEL shares and a crackdown on tax evasion explain the upturn in deficit figures.
So, what do we have here? Simple, a sluggish national economy on the one hand and a booming stock market on the other. There can be no doubt about the stock market's boom. Last year, the value of Italian mergers and acquisitions more than doubled, with the number of transactions rising by 43 per cent.
Most spectacular of these transactions was Olivetti's $33 billion (€32.7 billion) purchase of former telephone monopoly, Telecom Italia, a hostile take-over described by some analysts as among the most significant corporate events of the European year.
An analysis of the best-performing euro-zone stocks among the 313 members of the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx index for last year starts with Tecnost, the company that Olivetti used as the vehicle with which to buy Telecom. Tecnost generated a total return of 770 per cent.
The key to what happened in Italy in 1999 and to what may continue to happen in 2000 may be found in an intriguing research document released last week by Turin's Young Industrialists' Association. Carried out in association with 55 research institutes worldwide, this survey ranked Italy 31st out of 123 countries for the degree of economic liberty.
A leading criterion in the research was the extent of government control of the economy which, in Italy, had dropped from more than 50 per cent in the late 1980s to 49.6 per cent in 1998 - among the highest in the industrialised world. And there's the rub. As Italy faces the new millennium, its unique brand of one-time state subsidised capitalism still has a long way to go before becoming a fully-fledged, open-market economy.
"This report is further proof that. . . the national system of production needs a big burst of liberalisation in order to compete in the global market," said Vincenzo Ilotte of the Young Industrialists.
Mr Ilotte could well be right. In the meantime, the Italian economic scenario looks like one in which booming stock market activity and further major privatisations (such as that of state carrier, Alitalia, later this year) go hand in hand with slow growth and high unemployment.
What remains to be seen is the level of social tension provoked by the last two elements, plus further threatened reforms of the national pensions system. The year 2000 will be many things but it is unlikely to be boring.
