Benetton scion plans changes at family holding company

MILAN, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Alessandro Benetton said on Friday he accepted the position of chairman in his family’s holding company Edizione to lead change in the group that controls some of Italy’s biggest companies such as Atlantia and Autogrill.

“I saw an opportunity for a change, to reinterpret the business strategy that has characterized us as a family over time,” the scion of the Benetton family said in a Instagram video.

He replied to a follower that the group would follow the principle of sustainability in a broad, social and global sense.

Benetton said the group had made same serious mistakes in the past due assigning tasks to the wrong people, and the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa was a “tragic consequence.”

In 2018 a bridge run by Atlantia’s tollway unit in the northern city of Genoa collapsed, killing 43 people. The Benetton family backed the sale of Atlantia’s Italian motorway assets to avoid the threatened cancellation of its lucrative concession.

Benetton, who leads Italian private equity firm 21 Invest, was appointed on Thursday as chairman of the family’s holding company Edizione in a move that brings the Benettons back to the helm. read more

Reporting by Riccardo Bastianello and Elisa Anzolin; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

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