Aeffe’s managing director Marcello Tassinari set to leave

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Dec 20, 2021

Italian fashion group Aeffe is making changes at the top. The group, which operates both licensed brands like Jeremy Scott, and its own labels Moschino, Alberta Ferretti, Philosophy and footwear brand Pollini, has announced that Managing Director Marcello Tassinari will step down at the end of the month, after nearly 20 years with the group, and also that it will create a strategic steering committee.

 
Tassinari is an economics graduate who joined Aeffe in 2002 as CFO, following stints at, among others, Arthur Andersen and Deloitte. He was appointed managing director in 2007. He and Aeffe are parting ways amicably, as the group indicated in a press release, thanking the manager “for his work until today,” and giving him a golden handshake worth €900,000, including €890,000 in severance compensation.
 
Some of Tassinari’s operational and managerial functions, such as that of CFO, will be assumed ad interim by CEO Simone Badioli, who has been with Aeffe since 1997, and was appointed CEO in 2014. The group has also announced the appointment of a new board member, Giancarlo Galeone, a partner at the Orienta Capital Partners investment fund and a former Aeffe director.

The group has decided not to appoint a new managing director, and to set up instead an “executive committee that will take care of steering the group’s strategy, while improving coordination among the group’s companies.” According to the group, “the continued pursuit of [Aeffe’s] goals and strategic objectives” will be guaranteed by the committee, comprising Executive President Massimo Ferretti alongside Badioli and Galeone.

Tassinari’s departure is part of Aeffe’s ongoing restructuring drive. The group has recently taken control of its leading label, Moschino, and of its distribution in China. In 2021, Aeffe’s sales have been growing at a healthy rate, and the group closed the first nine months of the year with a revenue of €250 million, up 21%. In the same period, the group returned to profitability, improving from a net loss of €14 million as of September 30 2020 to a net income of €23.2 million a year later, up 74% on its pre-pandemic levels.