The sworn appraisal is signed by the Milanese accountant and auditor Massimo Rho and is dated 20 January 2023. Shortly before, Chiara Ferragni had given him the task of estimating the value of the personal stake of 32.50% in the company Fenice srl , because he wanted to transfer, as he later did, that share from his own individual to another of his companies, Sisterhood srl. It is a previously unpublished document which risks complicating Ferragni’s life precisely at the moment of its greatest need, now that with the sharp contraction in turnover following the Balocco case it needs to look for new partners for Fenice srl and a capital injection of 6 million euros, as Rosario Dimito revealed on Messenger.
Chiara’s share in Fenice was worth just over 1.5 million
That sworn appraisal that answers the question “How much is Fenice srl worth?” only a year ago he had valued the company almost twenty times less than the value of 75 million euros that Ferragni today uses as a reference for a capital increase capable of obtaining those 6 million euros of contribution. The accountant Rho, in fact, had estimated 100% of that company at just 4.5 million euros, establishing that the reference value of Ferragni’s share amounted to 1,538,875 euros. To arrive at that figure, the accountant chose to value Fenice srl according to the equity method, which is one of the most common valuation methods.
The accountant’s choice of Chiara’s assets
In his report Rho wrote that he believes that «the simple equity method is the one that can guarantee the most objective result possible, largely reducing any possible margin of arbitrariness and, consequently, he deems it appropriate to adopt it for the purposes of carrying out this evaluation relating to the subject asset of the contribution”” The accountant further explained: “The equity method quantifies the economic value of the company’s capital by appropriately adjusting the value of the net equity and making the value of the company’s assets current and updated”.
That assessment today becomes hara-kiri for Ferragni
The evaluator then explains that “the other methods of evaluation, income, financial, empirical which use evaluation criteria based on the ability of companies to create profit and/or financial flows did not appear consistent with the purposes of the transfer operation examined”. And here there is a real risk of hara-kiri from Ferragni who certainly did not imagine the situation in which she would find herself just over a year later. The accountant looked for a method that would keep the valuation as low as possible so as not to make the transfer of the share from Ferragni to Sisterhood excessively onerous. So he did not evaluate the Chiara Ferragni brand except for the figures in the balance sheet after depreciation, nor did he want to hypothesize the future development of turnover and profits. But within a year this aspect has also become a boomerang for Ferragni, given that sales have collapsed and the Balocco case is forcing it to look for other partners. Now regardless of that assessment from a year ago or significantly deviating from it risks being truly difficult in the face of the downward trend.
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