Tisg: 'Senior company figures involved in extra budgets'
Forensic due diligence and discussions with trade unions announced. Timing of budget approval will be rescheduled
Key points
The budget overruns of The Italian sea group's nautical group "include, among others, some of the company's top figures, who have declared themselves to be the authors and perpetrators of actions carried out without the knowledge of the managing director (Giovanni Costantino, ndr), the board of directors and the control bodies". This is what the company announced to the market, after hectic days marked by the resignation first of the group's chairman, Filippo Menchelli, and vice chairman, Marco Carniani, and then of the director, and member of the related-party transactions committee, Laura Angela Tadini.
After lengthy meetings held in recent days and over the weekend, the company also announced the start of forensic due diligence to ascertain the extent of the extra budget, which has not yet been quantified, and announced that the supplier International factor Italia had sent a request for payment. In the meantime, discussions have been initiated with trade unions, the banking system, and other stakeholders, and a rescheduling of the budget approval timeframe has been foreseen.
"Blockade on overspending lifted"
In a note, therefore, the company announced that the board of directors had taken note 'of the fact that the company incurred significant extra-budgetary costs in the execution of orders'. This was made possible, the document goes on to say, 'by the fact that a group of subjects set up a system to bypass the block on exceeding the expenses foreseen by the authorised budget for each job order. The perimeter of the group and the identity of these subjects, as of today partially defined, are in the process of being definitively ascertained as part of the forensic due diligence".
From the initial findings, however, the text notes, it emerged that 'among those involved in the alleged irregularities' were, as reported above, 'senior figures in the company'. Managing Director Costantino, moreover, told the board that 'the company has already taken steps to send formal letters of disciplinary dispute, in some cases with precautionary suspension, to those responsible identified to date'.
Kpmg will analyse financial management
It will be Kpmg that will carry out the forensic due diligence, "covering the entire management of the existing orders, the internal control model as well as financial management. The activity will last an estimated six weeks for the first preliminary phase, and will then extend sampling over the following two months, also on the basis of the evidence that will emerge. Kpmg will produce a preliminary red flag report after six weeks to be delivered to the board of directors and based on a sample of orders".
