ITALIAN AGRI-FOOD BUSINESS SUFFERS FROM DWARFISM. DISLIKES AGGREGATIONS AND THE STOCK EXCHANGE. BUT ACCORDING TO FEDERALIMENTARE, THIS SECTOR MUST GROW IF IT IS TO SUCCESSFULLY CONFRONT THE MARKET

Many small companies that want to grow. This is the reality of Italian Agri-food business companies that count over 36,000 small businesses, of which only 6,550 have more than 9 workers employed. And the processes to consolidate the sector have been modest in recent years. These are the results of a study by Kpmg Corporate Finance, that was recently presented by Federalimentare (an Italian national food association).
Over the past five years, there were only 165 mergers and acquisitions, or, about 25-30 per year. So far in 2005, there have been 27 mergers and acquisitions out of 357 proposed that have been concluded successfully. Limited results have also been recorded on the Stock Exchange, which has quoted a total capitalization of 7.6 billion euros, equal to about 1.1% of the entire Italian exchange and far from the 130 billion registered by Euronext, which includes some of the most important stock exchanges in Europe. In 2005 Italian food earnings reached 107 billion euros, with a growth of 1.9%, and 3.4% for exports with a total of 15.1 billion euros.
Federalimentare president, Luigi Rossi di Montelera emphasized, ”We need more aggregation in this sector. The dimensions of these companies must grow to allow these businesses to open to markets because the era of protectionism has ended. On these markets, however, we must also ask for certain and equal rules for all, both on a social and competitive level, and in order to combat forgery”.