Just days after announcing a 45 percent drop in its annual profit in 2008, The Bulgari Group has announced the resignation of its chief financial officer.
On March 11 the company reported that its net profit fell 45.1 percent from 150.9 Euro in the 2007 calendar year to 82.9 million Euro in 2008.
“The result has been significantly affected by the losses generated by hedging transactions on exchange rates which led to a negative result of 14.9 million Euro in the last quarter and of 4.7 million Euro in the full year,” said the company.
The company also reported that its consolidated turnover fell 0.9 percent in the same period from 1091.0 million Euro to 1075.4 million Euro.
“Due to the worsened macroeconomic conditions, which became very difficult in the fourth quarter of the year, all product categories, with the exception of perfumes registered a sales decrease – jewellery fell by 1.5 percent and watches and accessories by 10.9 percent and 4.1 percent respectively.”
Bulgari Group chief executive officer Francesco Trapani said “the drastic and sudden sales shortage” that occurred in the last quarter of 2008 due to the global economic crisis has “very negatively affected the full year results”.
“2009 will be a very difficult year as well and our commitment will be focussed – in addition to new product launches in all product categories – on managing the cost base even more rigorously to make the Group more and more efficient.”
On March 16 the Bulgari Group announced that Alberto Nathansohn, its CFO since May 2006, will leave his position at the end of this month “to seize new professional opportunities”.
In addition the company said it has undertaken an internal reorganisation of its top management as a cost-cutting measure due to “the difficult macroeconomic environment”.