The textile district must urgently face the challenge of consolidation: to be accomplished there is the difficult, but not impossible, mission of making our small (often excessively) medium-sized enterprises stronger by capitalizing on them. The topic, very current and made urgent by the crisis that the manufacturing sector is going through, was addressed by the Order of Accountants with the leaders of the Regional Commission of the Italian Banking Association (ABI) during the initiative on Crpublished and Finance, Support for SMEs from the Capital Market which took place at the Palazzo delle Professioni.
After Filippo’s opening speech Ravone, president of the Order, Giancarlo Barbieri and Giorgio Occhipinti, respectively president and secretary of the ABI Regional Commission, illustrated the role of banks in the capital market, while Leonardo Ghezzi, deputy director of IRPET, the regional institute for economic planning, gave a picture of the district’s “vulnerabilities” that need to be addressed. This was followed by speeches by Vania Corazza, CEO of C&G Capital, a company that also carries out the role of accompanying companies towards the capital market, Andrea Ferrara, Commercial Director of Fiduciary Services of Banca del Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Pier Luigi Brogi, accountant from Prato, who highlighted the key role of the accountant in supporting businesses
“The theme of consolidation is central, we are committed to accompanying companies in this step which is necessary to overcome the crisis – he stated Ravone – we want to verify what alternative and supplementary ways to the banking system exist to capitalize our companies which are structurally small and undercapitalized and very dependent on bank financing. Certainly the use of the capital market, which we are exploring today, has its relevance and its interest in some specific situations”.
For ABI Toscana, yesterday was the first direct meeting in the Prato area. “It is an important moment, we wanted to contextualize the discussion on the district – he said Giancarlo Barbieri, president of the ABI Regional Commission – The capital market has a vast dimension of certain interest for companies, there are transitions, such as the generational one, in which the use of activities such as the lesser-known ones of fiduciaries can be useful”.
The deputy director of IRPET confirmed the difficult phase that Prato companies are going through in an Italian and European context that is certainly not positive. “There are very strong difficulties especially for very small companies, the institutions together with the banking system must stand alongside the companies to ferry the district’s production system into the future – he stated Leonardo Ghezzi – awareness is needed on interest rates, which are very high, and the accumulation process must be encouraged because the results of companies depend on their competitiveness on international markets. To relaunch the district we need to relaunch investments.”
