Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, March 31st. Today on Forbes, as Europe invests more

in its armies, gunmaker Beretta is a likely winner. The October sun is rising over the sprawling

104-acre grounds of German ammunition producer RWS on the outskirts of Nuremberg.

Far from the 19th century red brick buildings that house the production facilities,

employees outfitted in goggles and earplugs test explosives starting at 7 a.m.

RWS turns out more than 3 billion components a year, including bullets, cartridges, and primers,

which ignite the propellant in the cartridge to push the bullet out of the gun.

One of the leading makers of small-caliber ammunition in the world, RWS is now part of

Beretta Holding, the company behind the world's oldest gunmaker, Italy-based Beretta.

The firm picked up RWS as part of its purchase of Ammotech, Europe's largest maker of ammunition

and pyrotechnics, for an undisclosed sum in 2022.

Beretta holding CEO Pietro Gasali Beretta, who is 63 years old and a 15th generation

descendant of the Beretta founders,

says, quote, this is our biggest acquisition yet.

Since joining the family business four decades ago and becoming CEO in 1995,

Pietro has helped remake the 499-year-old family-owned company by scooping up firms making everything from rifles

to luxury clothing.

The Amotech deal, for one, added $600 million to Beretta's annual sales, helping it overtake

Sig Sauer and Smith & Wesson and added several NATO militaries to its roster of customers.

Beretta is now the world's largest

firearms company, with $1.7 billion in revenues in 2024. Speaking from the company's

Luxembourg headquarters, Pietro outlines how that purchase helped the company, long known for

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