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Few less than 600 shareholders
'cry' for their investment in the Standa's shares and the confidence
(unfortunately misplaced) they reposed in the charisma of Silvio Berlusconi,
when the Knight, after acquiring the company's majority, assumed the
presidency and ensured that he would have brought balances and managements
back to excellent levels.
It's maybe the chance
to remind that President Berlusconi wanted with him, in the Board of
Directors, his brother Paolo, a relative of his, Giancarlo Foscale,
the ever faithful Fedele Confalonieri, Marcello Dell'Utri, Vittorio
Dotti and Gianni Letta.
In the following years
Marina and Pier Silvio Berlusconi arrived and it succeeded other Fininvest
men (o para-Fininvest): entered, for example, Cesare Previti and Ubaldo
Livolsi, and left, for example, Letta and Confalonieri. Silvio Berlusconi
after some years resigned since he become aware that the Presidency
of a company listed at the Stock Exchange did not fit him, since delaying
the results, he was exposed to critics by press, to the dissent votes
of the minorities and trade unions contentions. In an early declaration
at the television, Berlusconi, listing the damages he underwent due
to his political choices, asserted that he was compelled to sell the
Standa since he was denied of the authorization for new openings.
The thesis is charming
but few related to true. Already over some years important regions (as
for example Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto, Puglia), a high number of provinces
and hundred municipalities were hold by 'forces' that did not and could
have nothing against a Knight's company. Really, after a long succession
of unsatisfying results regularly followed by reorganization plans,
all of them failed, the Fininvest in 1998 threw in the sponge and decided
to sell. The purchaser for the 'food' was the Franchini Group, and for
the "non food" the Coin group. Sold the trademark, the company took
the business name of Euridea S.p.A. The Euridea 1999 balance highlights
all the flaws of previous years with a loss contained only by those
'extraneous' entries as the fiscal ones.
At the Euridea it remains
to manage - among others - a whole of legal disputes formed by more
than two thousand cases for which the company avails of more than 200
law offices, with "professional and consulting costs " that amount to
13.125 million lire in the fiscal year. In the current Euridea balance
are registered, furthermore, credits for nearly 80 billions against
which it has been allocated provisions for nearly 70 billion lire. In
the shareholders' meeting on last 29th, a shareholder underlined that
Euridea has inherited the "wrecks" raised in the previous fiscal years...
How prove him wrong?
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