and died 12 October 2010, in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

) was a prominent Australian businessman, mechanical engineer, founder of Tenix and co-founder of Transfield

Transfield Services

Transfield Services Limited is an Australian publicly listed corporation providing operations and maintenance, asset management, project and capital management outsourcing and infrastructure development services to the resources and industrial, infrastructure services and property and facilities...

.

Background and early years

The eldest child of Guiseppe and Flavia Salteri, Carlo Salteri was raised in a well-heeled family in Milan. In 1940 he commenced an engineering degree at Politecnico before being called up by the Italian army a year later, where he served as a junior artillery officer. At the conclusion of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 Salteri commenced work with Italian engineering company, Società Anonima Elettrificazione SpA (SAE), before the company was awarded a contract to build powerlines in Australia. Salteri was appointed in charge of the 25 workers travelling to Australia, together with Franco Belgiorno

Franco Belgiorno-Nettis

Franco Belgiorno-Nettis, AC was an Australian industrialist and patron of the arts. He founded the construction and engineering company Transfield and also helped establish the Biennale of Sydney....

 as his deputy. In 1951 Salteri migrated to Australia with his wife Renata and young family.

Transfield

After working in Australia for five years withh SAE, in 1956 both Salteri and Belgiorno-Nettis (as he later became known) jointly decided to leave SAE and form Transfield, in a partnership that lasted 40 years. The company focused on major engineering projects, such as bridges, tunnels, dams, hydro-electric and coal power stations, oil rigs, concert halls, sugar mills and power lines. Included in their list of major achievements are the construction of the Gateway Bridge

Gateway Bridge, Brisbane

The Sir Leo Hielscher Bridges are a pair of road bridges on the Gateway Motorway , which skirts the eastern suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. They are the most eastern crossing of the Brisbane River, the closest to Moreton Bay, crossing at the Quarries Reach, between Eagle Farm and Murarrie...

 in Brisbane and the Sydney Harbour Tunnel

Sydney Harbour Tunnel

The Sydney Harbour Tunnel is a twin-tube road tunnel in Sydney, Australia. The tunnel was completed and opened to traffic in August 1992 to provide a second vehicular crossing of Sydney Harbour to alleviate congestion on the Sydney Harbour Bridge....

. By the early 1980s, Transfield had in excess of 3,000 employees and an annual turnover of A$

Australian dollar

The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...

350 million; and within five years grew to the point of being the biggest engineering firm in south-east Asia. The company acquired the Williamstown Dockyard

Williamstown Dockyard

Williamstown Dockyard was one of Australia's principal ship building yards at Williamstown, Victoria, Australia.The Colony of Victoria decided to construct a large slipway at Williamstown to provide ship repair facilities in 1856 and the Government Patent Slip was opened in 1858. Slip Pier was...

 in Melbourne and, in 1989 after winning a A$6 billion contract to build ten ANZAC class frigates

Anzac class frigate

The Anzac class is a ship class of ten frigates; eight operated by the Royal Australian Navy and two operated by the Royal New Zealand Navy...

 for the Australian and New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 governments, the largest defence company in Australia. When visiting Australia in 1986 Pope John Paul II toured the Transfield factory located at Seven Hills

Seven Hills, New South Wales

Seven Hills is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Seven Hills is located 34 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Blacktown. Seven Hills is part of the Greater Western Sydney region...

.

The pair stood down as joint managing directors in 1989 in favour of their eldest sons, Paul Salteri and Marco Belgiorno-Zegna. However, in a dispute between Salteri and Belgiorno-Nettis in 1995, the differences between the two families became irreconcillable and Transfield, then valued at A$733.2 million was split in two. The Belgiorno-Nettis family kept the name Transfield and the construction side of the business, while the Salteri family got the company's North Sydney headquarters and the defence operations, which they then renamed as Tenix.

Tenix

Tenix grew quickly on the back of the contracts to construct the ANZAC class frigates and completion of the Jindalee Operational Radar Network

Jindalee Operational Radar Network

The Jindalee Operational Radar Network is an over-the-horizon radar network that can monitor air and sea movements across 37,000 km2. It has an official range of 3,000 km. It is used in the defence of Australia and can also monitor maritime operations, wave heights and wind directions...

 (JORN) project. The company expanded across the
defence sector into engineering infrastructure and service businesses, such as gas, water, electricity, and the supply of speed cameras and traffic wardens. By the time that Salteri retired in 2007, Tenix had annual revenue of A$1.7 billion. Tenix sold its defence business to BAE Systems

BAE Systems Australia

BAE Systems Australia, a subsidiary of BAE Systems plc, is the largest defence contractor in Australia. It was formed by the merger of British Aerospace Australia and GEC-Marconi Systems and expanded by the acquisitions of Armor Holdings in 2007 and Tenix Defence in June 2008.-History:BAE Systems'...

 in June 2008, and its main business interests are in infrastructure and parking and traffic businesses across Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and the USA.

The name Tenix derives from tenacity

Tenacity

Tenacity is the customary measure of strength of a fiber or yarn. In the U.S. it is usually defined as the ultimate strength of the fiber divided by the denier....

, inspired by a comment made by Salteri's grandfather when Salteri was a young boy:

"...to make one million, one has to start from a 5 centime coin..."

Salteri reputably kept this coin from that day, until the day of his death.

Personal

In 1999, Salteri was made a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

The Order of Merit of the Italian Republic was founded as the senior order of knighthood by the second President of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi in 1951...

 by the Italian government. In 2002, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia for service as a leader in industrial and technological development in Australia, to the engineering, construction and manufacturing industries, and to the community through a range of artistic, cultural and health-related organisations.

Salteri established the Tenix Foundation to provide assistance for education, research and underprivileged children. Up until his passing, Salteri was a patron of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation and was a key supporter of education for indigenous

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

students.

Salteri died at the Mater Hospital in Sydney after a short illness, aged 89.