Damiani, welfare shines

Italians buy less jewelry. And Damiani is asking for “redundancy pay” for employees. According to the unions, the suspension from work and salary integration treatment involves 150 employees for Damiani and 18 for Rocca, a chain of jewelry stores connected to the Valenza brand. In total, the employees of the Damiani group are around 600, but only the Italian ones are affected. The measure is being discussed in Rome, at the Ministry of Labor. “But the redundancy pay would not affect more than 50 employees at the same time. The situation is not dramatic: the project is to deal with the current market situation, especially the Italian one”, downplays Giuseppe Viola, central director of the group. According to what is reported by the newspaper La Stampa, in its Alessandria edition (the Italian province where Valenza is located), “the operation must be read in the context of the complex international organizational review process of the group. The business is becoming increasingly international, the foreign market is growing at an increasingly significant rate and therefore requires better structured local presences”, Viola claims. “The group is solid and, despite the negative economic conditions of the traditional Italian and European markets, it has never stopped the investments needed to guarantee the company’s future. But now we must make our economic results shine again”. In fact, Damiani closed the first nine months of the fiscal year 2013-14 (which ends in June 2014) with a turnover of 110.3 million euros, up 2.6%, an EBITDA that returned to positive for 0.3 million, but a net loss of 3.6 million. In 2012-2013 it had been 4.7 million.