AGI is a leading news company and supports the Italian publishing, institutional, industrial world with its content.
Eni has been AGI's publisher since 1965. AGI is one of the most authoritative voices in the Italian news world. It produces quality products, services and content, delivering them through cutting-edge communication strategies and technological infrastructure with a unique ability to get inside the news, objectively gather facts and deliver them in real time.
AGI is resolutely pursuing its strategy, launched at the end of 2020, of becoming a leader in the production and distribution of news and communication content at the service of its customers, with journalism at its heart and digital support as its foundation.
Agenzia Italia was founded in Rome on 27 July 1950 by journalist Giulio De Marzio and lawyer Walter Prosperetti, at a time when the country was emerging from a period of social and economic depression and in the wake of the Marshall Plan, which was designed to breathe new life into an economy exhausted by the Second World War.
After two years of hard work to establish itself in a publishing market dominated by the ANSA monopoly, in 1952 and throughout the 1960s, the “economic miracle” years, AGI, under the direction of Adolfo Annesi, decided to play the international information card. The aim was to provide international policy information and services to meet the growing demand of Italian companies interested in foreign markets. At its first and historic headquarters, in Via di Campo Marzio in Rome, AGI was the first to install a system of antennas (which aroused great public curiosity) capable of receiving broadcasts from the BBC, Radio Ljubljana, Radio Cairo, etc.. The news was sent to all AGI offices in Italy and abroad through the first advanced teleprinter systems.
In 1965 the agency was sold to Eni - with which it had already worked on editorial decisions to give greater space for Italian companies - and run within the state holdings. With its new director, Elvezio Bianchi, already Italian General Manager of the American agency Upi, AGI specialised in the field of economic information: in 1967 it acquired the American Dow Jones economic channel and compelled Italian newspapers to adapt their layout with pages devoted exclusively to economic and financial information. Ten years later, AGI also took over Ap's global service (later replaced by Reuters), thus offering a thorough service, not only in Italy but also abroad. This was complemented by the international services of the Soviet Tass (now Itar-Tass) and of the Spanish Efe.
Throughout the 1970s, political/parliamentary and economic/financial information was the spearhead of AGI's news programming. Often their terminals - with live stock market quotes - were placed in bank trading rooms, reaching a public increasingly interested in financial investment.
The eighties were the epoch of technological innovation: telematics entered the AGI newsroom in a big way, with the computerised transmission of news via the Videotel network, managed by the then Sip, and in the audiovisual field. After telematics, it was the turn of information technology: in 1997, AGI was one of the first to create its own website; new products were developed, the AGIgiornale and then the "AGI on line" portal and news bulletins dedicated to web portals. The end of the telegraph network in 2001 signalled the beginning of satellite and digital transmission.
In the 2000s, AGI also decided to submit its main news bulletin for quality certification, becoming the first news agency to achieve this. Since then, it has continued with its decision to focus on international editorial. Rather than the costly route of acquiring networks and services from competitors, its more strategic route is to form media partnerships with news organisations - radio, TV, press agencies, newspapers - based in emerging markets and in areas of high geopolitical interest.
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