Firenze Fiera, the relaunch after the reorganization – Chronicle
The board of directors of Firenze Fiera approved the four-year recovery and relaunch plan for the period 2022-2025. Capital increase, passage from subsidiaries to investee companies, a reduction in the loss of millions from -3.6 to -800 thousand in the last year: these are some of the innovations, mentioned by the president of Firenze Fiera, Lorenzo Becattini. President, how are you going to face this difficult season for trade fairs and congresses? “Our hope is that within a year or two we will return to values close to those pre-Covid. We want to face the future with a series of innovations with the aim of restoring and relaunching Firenze Fiera, starting, for example, from…
The board of directors of Firenze Fiera approved the four-year recovery and relaunch plan for the period 2022-2025. Capital increase, passage from subsidiaries to investee companies, a reduction in the loss of millions from -3.6 to -800 thousand in the last year: these are some of the innovations, mentioned by the president of Firenze Fiera, Lorenzo Becattini.
President, how are you going to face this difficult season for trade fairs and congresses?
“Our hope is that within a year or two we will return to values close to those pre-Covid. We want to face the future with a series of innovations with the aim of restoring and relaunching Firenze Fiera, starting, for example, the change in its corporate nature. The Region, in its budget law, acknowledged that, since there is no shareholder agreement between the shareholders, Firenze Fiera can no longer be configured as a control, but has become a shareholding. This gives the directors a greater flexibility in normal activity, but also in extraordinary matches “. In this regard: the plan provides for a capital increase …
“Yes, we have proposed a capital increase of up to 12 million, divisible against payment, to be resolved in an extraordinary meeting by 31 March 2022. In fact, we believe that the company’s financial security also rests on the need for greater liquidity”.
The institution managed to reduce the loss from 3.6 million in 2020 to -800 thousand euros in 2021, the year in which the fairs restarted only in July. How did you do?
“Not so much for the effect of management, but for the refreshments obtained in 2021 by the government, the Region and thanks to some interventions on spending. It will become a problem, for all the fairs in Italy, if the government – how we will ask everyone next Friday assembly in Verona – will not guarantee refreshments even in 2022 “.
What will the relationship with Pitti and Convention Bureau be in the coming years?
“A possible merger had been hypothesized with Pitti in the previous three years. Even without it, we think that an agreement between these two companies should be made, also for the possibility of doing co-business and using the Stazione Leopolda on our part. With Convention Bureau a greater synergy would be interesting, increasing the share of Firenze Fiera, now 40%, of the company “.
At what point are the works at the fair?
“In May, the new Centro Affari will be inaugurated and, as mayor Nardella declared, after Pitti 2023, work will start on the Bellavista, a 2,500-seat auditorium, and the renovation of the Machiavelli high school will begin. Cavaniglia will follow, but we will have to be careful not to close the Fortress too much, not for Covid but for the works. In that case we would in fact lack the revenues to keep the company in balance “.
The fairs?
“Our direct fairs will all be held between April and May. We start with Firenze Home Texstyle which we postponed on the dates from April 1 to 4, then there is Mida, the International Handicraft Exhibition, which will take place in the usual period from April 23 and May 1, finally Didacta Italia, which is postponed to May, from 20 to 22, to guarantee us a greater presence of schools and principals. With Earth Technology Expo, the exhibition on digital and environmental transition, we have established a new type of the fair, the shared one: we don’t just give the spaces, but we design and build the fair with the private entity that organizes it. We hope to be able to adopt this formula also for the Art and Restoration Exhibition “.
Monica Pieraccini
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