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After having declared the judicial liquidation of the English parent company on January 27th, yesterday the Bologna Court ascertained the state of insolvency of the Italian La Perla factory (La Perla Manufacturing Srl) and appointed the three judicial commissioners who will now have 30 days to file their opinion on the feasibility of opening an extraordinary administration for the historic Bolognese lingerie brand. Or whether to opt instead for a judicial liquidation like the holding company: all in all good news for the 220 workers of the Bolognese factory, also because the Court has established that the management of the company must immediately be transferred to the commissioners of Mimit – the Francesco lawyers Paolo Bello, Francesca Pace and Gianluca Giorgi – to fill the void left by the evanescent entrepreneur Lars Windhorst.
Creditors will have until next April 15th to insinuate themselves into the liabilities, while May 15th is the date already set by the Court for the examination of the debt status (delegated judge Maurizio Atzori). Two months of relative respite are therefore opening for the group’s production company, while in the meantime it will be anything but easy to find a balance with the English commissioners.
In fact, the double liquidation (English and Italian) of the holding La Perla Global Management UK Limited, owner of the brands (a dozen) and all the assets of La Perla, seized by the Bolognese judge to prevent their counterparts at the Crown Court from selling them, must be resolved . Among these, there are the two operational plants in Bologna and Porto, where a total of 500 jobs are in the balance. But the social issue is far from the ropes of justice in London, which across the Channel has to deal with a few handfuls of workers and instead aims to derive the maximum benefit, and in the shortest possible time, for the creditors of the corsetry house. Which is one step away from closing precisely on the occasion of its 70th year of activity, but for the last 17 years it has bounced from one investment fund to another down an increasingly dangerous slope.
«We will have to find an agreement with our English colleagues and merge the two liquidation procedures into a single process – underlines the Bolognese curator, Luca Mandrioli, who is in constant contact with the London professionals –. Entrepreneurs interested in taking over the entire complex have already shown themselves, but no one invests unless they are certain that the English will not open lawsuits against the Italians or vice versa, so we need to find a point of agreement.”