Rest of the World beats Italy 2-1. It is not the final result of a friendly soccer match but the balance of the “shopping” business in the 5 years of the Great Crisis (2009/2013).
It means that for every Euro spent by the Italian companies to acquire foreigner enterprises, there were two Euros spent by the international holdings to buy the Italian jewels.
According to a study by the society of revision Kpmg for the Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera”, from 2009 up today 363 Italian firms were acquired by entrepreneurs, funds of investment or sovereign wealth funds for almost 47 bln of Euro.
The peak was in 2011 when there were 109 operations on the Italian market, while the first six months of 2013 are in line with the previous years: 42 ac-quisitions for an amount of 4.1 billions of Euro.
From Bulgari, acquired by the holding of the luxury Lvmh for 4.3 billions of Euro (2011), to Parmalat ended (in the same year) in the French hands of Lactalis for 3.7 billions; from the very recent Loro Piana, the 80% now belongs to Bernard Arnault Group (2013), to Coin, for 906 million passed to the English fund Bc Partners. A lot of Italian top brands changed passport: Ducati, Valentino, Moncler, Ferré, Bertolli, Orzo Bimbo, Cesare Fiorucci, Mv Agusta, Ferretti Yacht.
On the other side, the Kpmg study confirms Italian investments in foreign countries equal to the half of those 47 billions disbursed by the international holdings to buy a good slice of Made in Italy.
From 2009 to today Italian firms have concluded 241 operations for 23.1 billions. A less heavy result perhaps, but it doesn’t reassure. That because it deals only with middle-small operations that, above all, allowed the Italian buyers to continue to sell even when the Italian market started to go down.
Big companies as Eni brought 10 acquisitions to term in the last 5 years, from United Kingdom to Canada, for over 8 million. Campari, very active in America, concluded for 936 millions 9 operations. Luxottica and Recordati 7 investing 276 million and 358 million. And there still are Amplifon, Gitech, Truck stop.
Great firms, with a strong fi-nancial structure and a market of predominantly international refe-rence. The 57% of the acquisitions has been done in Western Europe, 23% in North America and 11% in East Europe.
It takes a new strategy to ob-tain the same foreigner investors results.
You will say, we wanted the globalization and now we suffer the consequences. For sure we cannot come back and, on the other hand, it is not sure the international investors will manage worse than the Italian firms.
By the way, it is a clear sign of a country economy becoming exhausted. Hopefully it is only a moment of crisis.
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