After the darkest years of the Benettons, the Italian family has just inaugurated a stage with the birth of Mundys, the new brand that replaces the old Atlantia to turn the page and end the shelving after taking control together with the Blackstone fund with a takeover bid valued at 19,000 million euros.
This is how the new CEO of Edizione, the financial arm of the family, Alessandro Benetton, presents himself to the world after a year of work, who recently announced the new name of the infrastructure colossus in front of shareholders, investors and other company officials in an act in Milan in which senior managers from ACS, partners of the new Mundys in Abertis, were also present.
“Anyone who has come across me knows that discontinuity and the future have always been part of my references in life as an entrepreneur, as a father. These points of reference could not be more timely in the narration that we want to do together with you”, said Benetton, who at 59 years old leads the new generation of the Treviso empire founded in the sixties by the brothers Luciano, Giuliana, Gilberto and Carlo Benetton.
The Italian infrastructure group wants to relaunch its image after it was overshadowed by the fall of the Morandi bridge in Genoa in August 2018, which was managed by Autostrade per l’Italia, then a subsidiary of Atlantia. The accident caused 43 deaths and in July the trial that should clarify the responsibilities began, with Giovanni Castellucci, former CEO of Autostrade, among the defendants. The leaders made some communication errors, they were pointed out by the Italian government – ??then led by the once anti-system 5 Star Movement – ??and Atlantia had to end up divesting itself of Autostrade per l’Italia, which was sold to a consortium formed by the Italian public bank Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and other funds.
Following the death of Gilberto Benetton, the financial soul of the founding brothers, shortly after the tragedy, the Benettons sought a breath of fresh air and last year Alessandro Benetton was chosen as head of the new generation of four cousins ??sons of the four founding brothers – each of them had designated their heir –: Alessandro (son of Luciano), Franca Bertagnin (of Giuliana), Sabrina (of Gilberto) and Christian (of Carlo). “It would have been banal to launch a new brand with the old ways of doing things. It is a brave challenge and therefore we need this discontinuity”, Benetton remarked to this newspaper after the coming-out.
Everything indicates that the new CEO will be the until now CEO of doBank, the Italian Andrea Mangoni, who will have to transform the group towards sustainability and digitization, the objectives set by Benetton and Blackstone, replacing Carlo Bertazzo who resigned at End of the year. For example, they want to eliminate emissions from their infrastructure in Fiumicino by 2030 or install fast charging programs for electric vehicles on highways and remove barriers to reduce emissions. José Aljaro, CEO of Abertis, a concessionaire owned by Mundys and ACS, also participated in the launch event, who explained that they hope to win new contracts in Puerto Rico –a country where highways are being privatized– and that they will present an offer in Greece before the summer for the relaunch of a concession.
Mundys is reborn as a colossus with a presence in 24 countries and more than 23,000 employees, 6,000 of them in Italy. Every year more than 3,000 million trips in light and heavy vehicles are recorded on the group’s highways, they manage airports (Fiumicino and Ciampino in Rome, and Nice, Cannes and Saint Tropez in France) with 60 million passengers and some seven million people use their Telepass mobility services.
Specifically, Mundys has planned organic investments to improve infrastructure of more than 10,000 million euros until 2027. Of these, 3,300 million will be invested in Italy, 1,900 in France, 230 in Spain and other countries, and 120 in Poland. They do not exclude new acquisitions, according to the head of Blackstone in Italy, Andrea Valeri, who advanced that the fund has promised to provide additional capital if necessary.
