Borsalino: the choice that outlived the proceedings

The situation

In 2015 Borsalino was 158 years old, carried a name known everywhere, and had a balance sheet that did not hold. I described it to WWD at the time as a bipolar company, with two faces — healthy and insolvent at once. I was a board member and chair of the committee for control over management.

There was one question on the table: who should be entrusted with the business, and how fast.

How I ran the search

As a competitive process rather than a wait. Around fifteen candidates mapped and worked through one by one, with three phase gates — confidentiality agreement, non-binding expression of interest, binding expression of interest — and admission to due diligence only beyond them. A live status beside each, so that at any moment it was clear who was advancing and who was out. It ended in a shortlist of four.

In April 2015 I brought my proposal to the board: enter without delay into a business lease with Haeres Equita, Philippe Camperio’s holding company, so as not to dissipate goodwill and to keep the jobs standing. The board resolved accordingly. From November 2015 the business was under lease, and production at Spinetta Marengo never stopped again.

How it ended, in full

The composition plan did not hold. Revoked at the end of 2016, a second proposal ruled inadmissible, and in December 2017 the Court of Alessandria declared the bankruptcy of Borsalino Giuseppe e Fratello S.p.A. — the historic company, the one carrying the debt. In July 2018 the business and the trademark were awarded at auction for €6.4M, with a single bidder: Haeres Equita.

That line is worth rereading. The candidate I brought to the board in 2015 is the same one who took the business out of bankruptcy in 2018 — and still owns it today. Since 2023 Borsalino has sat within ChimHaeres Investment Holding, an equal joint venture with Chimera Abu Dhabi: around twenty monobrand stores across Italy, London, Paris, Monte Carlo and Cannes, one hundred and eighty employees, and the Spinetta Marengo factory in production.

What it taught me

The proceedings did not hold. The choice of counterparty did.

It is a distinction rarely drawn in Italy. In corporate distress, ninety per cent of the energy goes into the architecture of the composition — perimeters, creditor classes, percentages, attestations — and ten per cent into who will actually take the business. Then the proceedings are consumed in court, and eleven years later what remains is the counterparty you brought to the table.

From that point on I have worked the other way round. Diligence on the acquirer is worth as much as diligence on the company: capital, yes, but also an industrial idea and the patience for a decade. In 2015 that assessment was the only thing genuinely within our control — and a gated process, with a status beside every candidate, was the way to do it properly rather than by impression.