«Companies should learn to manage uncertainty»- Corriere.it

Pandemic, war, energy crisis, inflation: the new normal for companies is that there is no such thing as normal. The CEO of Illimity, Corrado Passera, has identified at least nine factors of uncertainty that require Italian companies to manage change and innovate. Where appropriate, by opening the capital to external investors.
«Companies that want to grow need resources, capital which can be equity or credit, and to be attractive they must have transparent plans, attractive in themselves», said the manager, speaking at the award ceremony for the «Attractiveness Finanziaria di Eccellenze d’Impresa», conferred to Reply for the listed companies and LBG Sicilia for the unlisted ones.

Lgb Sicilia was born in 2001 in Ragusa and is specialized in the processing of carob seeds, to obtain flour, a natural stabilizer used in many food products. The company led by Giovanni Carlo Licitra reached 249 million in revenues in 2022, with an export share of 93%. Founded in 1996, however, Reply is today listed on the Star segment of the Milan Stock Exchange and employs more than 13,000 people in 16 countries. The company is close to the 2 billion mark in revenues, generated through both internal growth and acquisitions, 11 in the last three years.

«The Italian economy boasts multiple excellences in areas that are not traditionally associated with Made in Italy such as software or medical research», underlined Ugo Loeser, CEO of Arca Fondi who, with Harvard Business Review Italia and GEA-Management Consultants established the award, now in its sixth edition. “The problem is that we often lack dimension,” he added. To increase it, a growing number of SMEs are turning to Piazza Affari. «In 2018 there were 357 listed companies, today they are around 420», remarked Fabrizio Testa, CEO of Borsa Italiana. “Meanwhile, the companies present on the main market, with high capitalization, have decreased, while those of medium-small size that seek capital in the listing to grow, expand and face challenges such as digitization and sustainable transition have increased”.

The event was also attended by Emma Marcegaglia, vice president and CEO of the homonymous group which was recently forced into an unexpected transformation. «With regards to the production of heavy plates, before the war most of our steel supplies came from Russia and Ukraine», recalled Marcegaglia. “After the outbreak of the conflict we managed to quickly divert supplies to Asia by leveraging our global network of suppliers with whom we have built solid relationships over the years, not only commercial but also personal”. The importance of relationships was also highlighted by Giovanna Della Posta, CEO of Invimit, an asset management company controlled by the Ministry of Finance. The manager is working on the valorisation of Italian public real estate assets and she revealed that she has met 100 international investors in recent months, including several sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Norway.