La Perla crisis, last call for extraordinary management

More than a month has passed since the commissioners of La Perla Manufacturing presented the report to the Court of Bologna on the possibility of admitting the company to extraordinary administration and therefore restarting production.

«On April 18th the 30 days to get a response on the extraordinary administration ended and we still don’t know anything, we are tired of waiting, the factory has been closed since December 15th and only a few weeks ago the redundancy fund was released for the 300 workers in Bologna, who had been without pay since last October. But no one here wants state subsidies, the goal is to go back to work.” These are the words with which Stefania Pisani, general secretary of Filctem Cgil of Bologna, explains the reasons for the unusual protest that took place yesterday in front of the gates of the La Perla Manufacturing plant, where the employees set up a workbench more than 20 meters long meters and reconstructed the entire production process for the creation of luxury lingerie appreciated all over the world: from the raw materials warehouse, to the style office, the technical office, cutting, prototyping, production, size development, administration , communication, marketing, e-commerce, returns office.

As a backdrop to the flash mob, giant-sized underwear hung in front of the entrance, the fame of the corsetry brand founded 70 years ago by Ada Masotti was giant, reaching a turnover of 250 million euros with 1,500 employees worldwide, but which in the last 17 years has been bounced from one foreign fund to another, in vain rescue attempts which regularly ended with loss-making budgets and the surrender of even the last owner, the financier Lars Windhorst.

Last January 27, the British Court decreed the judicial liquidation of the English parent company La Perla Global Management UK, followed on February 1 by the decision of the Court of Bologna to also declare the Italian plant of Perla Manufacturing Srl, the unit productive, with the appointment of three judicial commissioners – the lawyers Francesco Paolo Bello, Francesca Pace and Gianluca Giorgi – with the task of evaluating the feasibility of the extraordinary administration. The three commissioners have already filed the opinion, validated by Mimit, in the Court of Bologna and the hope is that yesterday, in the last council chamber of the month, the Court will have decided. «We will know in a few days, the extraordinary administration would also allow the other two procedures to be reunified and absorbed into the management of the Bolognese “factory”, the one opened in London for the parent company La Perla Management UK, of which I am curator with my colleague Andrea Monari – explains Luca Mandrioli, an accountant and academic from Modena – and that of La Perla Italia, which owns the boutiques, which is itself in judicial liquidation”. The alternative is judicial liquidation which, however, implies continuing with two parallel procedures for a single entity, La Perla Management UK and its subsidiaries, because after Brexit it is no longer possible to apply the rules on cross-border insolvency and London and Bologna should carry out two processes, one according to English law and the other according to Italian law, which are very different from each other.

An unprecedented case in legal literature. And a solution, that of liquidation, which would lead to the definitive closure of the Bolognese lingerie factory, which can only produce but not sell, because the only counterparty entitled to acquire the production and sell it is the English parent company. «If the commissioners reactivate production today, the company will find itself storing all the goods in the warehouse, because La Perla Manufacturing cannot sell them – explains Mandrioli – the only way would be to license the use of the brand in Italy». There is no news of investors interested in taking over the entire and intricate compendium of Italian-British companies, “there is only interest in taking over the brand” admits the curator.