Page 12 - Annual report 2020

Mr. Laviosa, you have managed the company in recent years of acquisitions and successes, what strategic guidelines do you think can be adopted to allow the Group to consolidate its growth path?
There is no valid formula for every season, we are simply convinced that we cannot take some positions for granted and acquired; success and growth paths are the result of the ability to be attentive and dynamic, abandoning, at any level, comfort zones.
What are the risk elements that you see in the medium term and what are the greatest opportunities?
The greatest risk is that we will not be able to find people with the right degree of passion and management style to involve in our projects; the best opportunity I see today is to develop our geographical presence in some countries that I consider strategic for the future of our sector.
The company has grown a lot both in terms of size and in terms of volumes and turnover, do you believe that the process of growth and internationalization has ended or do you see other developments?
I am from a banal but now established consideration, over and above the socio-political aspects that I do not want to address here, there can be no ‘happy degrowth’ in the business world, nor can
there be the maintenance of the long-term status quo. I want to say that a company is obliged to grow, perhaps even diversifying, but it must do so by its very nature, in the world of companies those who decide not to grow, decide, at the same time, to decrease.
As you now know, many Italian companies have now been acquired by large international groups, because you have never succumbed to the flattery of the great foreign players and because, in contrast, you have gone to invest abroad by making Laviosa an Italian multinational?
I have always considered the Company as a perpetual becoming, a family business is first of all a transfer of ethical and moral values, I could not think of a company managed only on an economic-financial basis, therefore only “head” and no “heart”. As it was for my father before me, having next generation who work inside the Company is, in itself, the best factor of conviction to work to maintain a direct management. Today, doing business is very complicated and giving a future to family businesses is even more complicated, but when you realize that the Values you have tried to transfer over the years to those who will manage the Future, have been taken on board, well then, you will never think of selling to the highest bidder.
Giovanni Laviosa
President&CEO
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