Luciano Benetton speaks with visitors after presenting the Benetton Fall-Winter 2019-2020 girls’s assortment in Milan, Italy, Feb. 19, 2019. (AP Photograph/Luca Bruno, File)
“I trusted and I used to be mistaken. I’ve been betrayed within the truest sense of the phrase. Months in the past I spotted that there have been some issues that weren’t proper, that the group {photograph} that the highest executives of the Board of Administrators repeated to me weren’t actual.”
With these phrases to the journalist Daniele Manca, from Corriere della Sera, probably the most conventional Italian newspaper, Luciano Benetton, who collectively together with his brothers Carlo, Gilberto and Giuliana based in 1965 within the province of Treviso, within the Italian area of Veneto, the Group Benetton justified his resignation as president of the corporate, which is a part of the Edizione household holding firm. Benetton estimated the “dramatic gap” within the stability sheet at round 100 million euros however that might stretch to 230 million.
By means of the Compañía de Tierras del Sud Argentino (CTSA), the Benettons are additionally house owners of tons of of 1000’s of hectares in Patagonia, to the purpose of being among the many largest landowners within the nation and being massive producers of sheep wool and beef and one of many firms that planted probably the most bushes within the Patagonian area, a venture that started in 2016 by planting 8,600 hectares of ponderosa pine with the target of reaching 16,000 hectares and a primary business minimize by 2034, to turn into a producer of higher high quality fibers .
The Benettons’ Patagonian properties led them to frequent conflicts with Mapuche teams, to whom in 2017 they supplied to donate 7,500 hectares within the province of Chubut.
The model, well-known for its colours, daring promoting and tons of of clothes gadgets, significantly initially for sweaters that Benetton produced in massive volumes however distributed in small portions till, as soon as the preferred colours had been detected, they’d them dyed. massively, already figuring out that they’d have an outlet, it has – based on Corriere this Sunday – some 5,000 shops on this planet and a few 6,000 direct workers.
In a protracted interview that gained the eye of all of Italy, Benetton confessed that it detected that there have been issues “in a tenuous means” on September 23 of final 12 months, however that “every thing appeared below management.”
Virtually ten months have handed since then. “Whereas we had been receiving recommendation on these first indicators, in a nonchalant method from the executives, I spotted that the numbers didn’t add up and that the issue was very totally different from what they’d described to me. And likewise for a very long time I had perceived discontent internally and externally to the corporate as a result of smug and incapable angle of the brand new executives,” Benetton informed Corriere, pointing, with out naming him, to the Board of Administrators headed by Massimo Renon, the CEO of the corporate. firm, which might have hidden “a dramatic stability sheet gap” of about 100 million euros.
From left to proper, Carlo and Gilberto, who died in 2018, Giuliana and Luciana Benetton (Courtesy: Benetton Group)
It is a determine that Benetton itself considers approximate. “Every little thing that emerged from September 2023 is a disgrace.” It was, he informed Corriere, “a shock that left us breathless.”
Luciano Benetton, 89, had distanced himself from the every day affairs of the Group in 2012, when it was functioning effectively and had a turnover of round 2,000 million euros yearly, however he returned in 2018, the identical 12 months by which Gilberto and Carlo, his two, died. youthful brothers.
The next 12 months he elected Renon as CEO, whom he now accuses – with out naming him – of getting deceived him or, on the very least, of being incapable.
Of the 4 founding siblings, Giuliana and Luciano now stay, whose departure from the holding firm can be formalized on the subsequent meeting, in mid-June.
The household holding firm, which is at present led by Alessandro, Luciano’s son, contains property that go far past the textile sector and extends to actual property investments (akin to in Patagonia), street concessions, meals manufacturing, operations within the insurance coverage sector and improvement and administration. of digital and port infrastructures.
From the start, colour was a key factor in Benetton’s business methods and promoting campaigns (Maxi Guterman)
Alessandro, the second era of the founders, sought to calm the waters relating to the bomb dropped by his father. He admitted that the 100 million euros that Luciano spoke of are “a major loss” however that they are going to make amends within the coming years with capital contributions of about 260 million euros to relaunch what many nonetheless keep in mind because the “United Colours of Benetton.” , one in every of its most well-known promoting campaigns and which made Oliviero Toscani, the Italian artistic in command of the group’s promoting, much more well-known.
