Utet Grandi Opere writes the last page. There historic publishing house of dictionaries and encyclopedias founded in Turin in 1791 by the Pomba brothers was declared bankrupt: the deed was registered on October 15, but the news came only now, thanks to a post on Facebook by linguist Raffaele Simone.
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De Agostini keeps Utet Libri active
Utet Grandi Opere was part of the Utet publishing house, an acronym that stands for Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, today belonging to the DeAgostini group, which had taken over it in 2002 and then sold it in 2013 to the company FMR Art ‘owned by Cose Belle d’Italia, while maintaining the ownership of On uteti, which still lasts.
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The story of Utet
Under the brand Utet Great Works, that under the Mole had its headquarters in corso United States, even if the actual one was in Milan in corso Cristoforo Colombo, were born collections of classics of every art and of different sciences and a tradition of dictionaries – from Tommaseo-Bellini to Battaglia to De Mauro – as well as treatises and encyclopedias that have made the cultural history of Italy, such as the Scala d’Oro.
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The request for an arrangement with creditors
Already at the end of March, the owner had requested an arrangement with creditors from the Court of Milan, which through various decrees had granted an extension for the presentation of the restructuring plan, but on 8 October last Utet Grandi Opere anticipated the times and asked for a ruling. one’s failure (Prefall Role procedure n.952 / 2020) – reads the decree of the second civil section of the Milanese Court – thus tacitly renouncing the request for an arrangement, reporting that he is no longer in a position to be able to provide for the relative deposit.
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The current owner and prestigious partners
The owner of Beautiful Things of Italy Stefano Vegni, former banker of Citigroup, also managing director of Utet Grandi Opere: control over the publishing house exercised for a year at 99.54% by Arca, whose 90% of Cbi and the remaining 10% of Marco Castelluzzo, president and managing director of the publishing house while shareholders of minority are, among others, Gabriele Galateri of Genola, president of Assicurazioni Generali and the Turin lawyer Marco Weigmann.
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The red accounts of Utet Grandi Opere
The balance sheet numbers weigh on the decision of the bankruptcy filing of the publishing house: 1.9 million euros of red in 2016 compared to revenues of 13.3 million, 1.3 million a year later, 1.7 million in 2018 and a 4 million deficit at the end of last year while the turnover gradually contracted to just over 5 million. The revenue crisis was triggered by the downsizing of the commercial network because sellers went from 70 in 2017 to 33 last year, which generated a significant drop in the percentage of new customers acquired. Then the banks scaled back their credit lines and finally came the coronavirus that made door-to-door selling impossible.
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