Hoepli, shareholders' meeting decides on liquidation

After 156 years it raises the white flag. Hoepli goes into voluntary liquidation. The shareholders' meeting of the historic Milanese publishing company has decided on the 'voluntary dissolution of the company and its liquidation', explaining in a note that the decision comes 'as the result of a painful and in-depth reflection on the overall situation of the company'. This is the formula with which it closes, or at least abruptly suspends, a story that for Milan is not just a publishing brand. It is a cultural garrison, a city address, a piece of productive memory.

The company's note does not leave much room for nuance. The 'negative operating results correlated with the forecast trend of the publishing and book market' and the 'serious endosocietal conflict' weighed heavily. Two factors, then: the accounts and the internal war. When they add up, they often leave no escape. And in fact, for the shareholders' meeting, voluntary liquidation was 'the only legally appropriate solution to avoid the dispersion of the company's assets and ensure, as far as possible, their best preservation'.

Leading the procedure will be lawyer Laura Limido, who will be called upon to ensure 'impartial and efficient' management with respect for creditors, employees and all those involved. With the declared objective of preserving the value of the company's assets, the activity of the historic publishing company thus ends. And the blow - which does not fall on deaf ears, but which has represented a Sword of Damocles, then fallen, since the first indiscretions appeared on 10 February in Il Fatto Quotidiano - does not only concern the financial statements. It concerns a name that for over a century and a half has accompanied technical education, professional training, university life, and the material culture of the country. Hoepli has been manuals, lexicons, scientific texts, shelves crossed by generations of students, professionals, readers. A brand that has had its strength in continuity and now stumbles at the most fragile point for many Italian family businesses: the conflict between ownership, strategies, power.

It is no coincidence that, along with the formal decision, comes an immediate political and corporate rift. Giovanni Nava, a shareholder with 30 per cent of the shares, distances himself and attacks the majority line: 'I note with great regret the decision of the majority of the shareholders of Hoepli Spa, who at the shareholders' meeting voted in favour of the liquidation of the company and the sale of the company, even if it is broken up into branches or even broken up altogether.

Nava claims to have opposed 'this drift' and accuses the current majority of not even having considered a step back to entrust the relaunch 'to a new management capable of imagining and implementing such a project'. Then the promise of battle: 'I will continue the battle in all venues and with every means made available by law to try to safeguard the activity of the publishing house and the bookstore that are a piece of Italia's history that is still alive and productive today thanks to the commitment of Hoepli Spa's 90 workers.