We heartily endorse the comments made the other day by the writer of the Financial Times Lex column bemoaning the official contraction of grand old company names into bleak initials – why does National Cash Register Co have to become NCR Corp, Rio-Tinto Zinc become RTZ, Tube Investments TI Group? – but Olivetti is determined to go the other way with a vengeance: the Italian has decided to turn its Syntax SpA software subsidiary, which had controlling stakes in seven software firms, minority holdings in 12 others – into a software holding company, and will swap the snappy Syntax name for the very much grander Generali di Sviluppo Servizio e Sistemi Software SpA.
