Benetton Group

"Benetton Group is a world class company with a global image balanced with local tastes, present in 120 countries around the world. The apparel business is the Group core activity, where a strong Italian character is blended with the style, quality and passion that characterized all its brands: the casual United Colors of Benetton; the fashion oriented Sisley; Playlife leisurewear; and Killer Loop streetwear. The Group produces over 130 million garments every year. Its retail network of 5,000 contemporary stores around the world, offers high quality customer services and generates a total turnover of approximately 1.9 billion euros." 

Company History
"Benetton was established in 1965 as a partnership by the Benetton family in Ponzano Veneto, Italy. It was reorganized as a limited liability company in 1978. The Company adopted the name Benetton Group S.p.A. in a corporate reorganization effective in December 1985. Prior to June 1986, the Company was wholly owned by the Benetton family. In June 1986, shareholders affiliated with the Benetton family sold shares representing approximately 11% of the Ordinary Shares to the public in Europe. The Benetton family initiated the public offering of such Ordinary Shares in order to establish a liquid public market for the Company's Ordinary Shares and to facilitate the Company's access to the international capital markets, with the listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in October 1988. In June 1989, Benetton made a public offering of 7,000,000 American Depositary Shares ("ADS"), each representing the right to receive two Ordinary Shares and listed the ADSs on the New York Stock Exchange. A public offer of 11,000,000 newly issued shares was made in a 1994 global offering. " In 2003, the Benetton family relinquished company leadership as Silvano Cassano, formerly of Hertz and Fiat became CEO. The Benetton family owns 70% of the shares in its clothing company, and Luciano Benetton will continue to be chairman of the board when the daily operations of the company are assumed by the new team. Silvano Cassano, the CEO, and Pier Francesco Facchini, the CFO, helped restructure the group and restored it to a sound financial footing. The CEO appears to have differed over Benetton's future strategy with the controlling family, and he resigned, along with the CFO, in 2006.   A Warner Music executive, Gerolamo Caccia Dominioni, took over as chief executive on June 1, 2007.  NY Times. March 17, 2007. Today in Business: New Benetton Chief

Historical Financial Information
Financial Highlights 2005-2007

Political and Public Influence
Paragraph information

Corporate Accountability
Paragraph

Domestic
Benetton posts its labor agreement with employees on its website, under Social: Industrial Relations.

Global
Policy: "The textile/apparel Magna Carta is a document undersigned by trade unions of European Community countries, which Benetton has autonomously adhered to." -- this document is extremely general and does not specify monitoring of the standards within it.

Campaigns:
 * 1998: In October 1998, an Italian newspaper alleged the exploitation of child labour in a Turkish plant working for the Benetton group. Italian trade unions, together with their Turkish counterparts, intervened and concluded an agreement which forbids the use of child labour in the Turkish textile plants working for the Benetton group. The agreement arose from alleged exploitation of child labour at Bermuda, a company which produces products bearing the Benetton trademark on behalf of Bogazici Hazir Giylim, a large textile company, which is a licensee of the Benetton trademark in Turkey. The agreement was negotiated by a delegation composed of representatives of the Italian textiles sector trade unions - Filta-Cisl, Filtea-Cgil and Uilta-Uil- and of the Turkish trade unions, Turk-Is and Disk-Tekstil, along with the Benetton group and the Turkish company Bogazici.
 * 1999: Labour Behind the Label urged consumers send 80,000 postcards demanding commitment to a living wage to 12 companies operating in the United Kingdom: adidas, Arcadia, Benetton, C&A, Etam, Gap Inc., French Connection, Nike, Reebok, River Island, Storehouse and Virgin Clothing. [www.labourbehindthelabel.org/ publications/wearing_thin2.htm]

Human Rights
"To the Mapuche Indians in southern Argentina, the Italian clothing manufacturer Benetton is the newest conquistador in 10,000 years of land struggles in Patagonia. Today Benetton is the largest landholder in Argentina, owning 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) in the resource-rich region of Patagonia. With 9% of Patagonia's most cultivatable land, their holdings amount to 40 times the size of the capital city of Buenos Aires, the second largest city in Latin America." 

Social Responsibility Initiatives
Benetton has tried to highlight social issues through its advertising, which has often been criticized as exploiting its subjects. The company also publishes a magazine, Colors, that has as it's mission "to bring a sense of social responsibility to Benetton's $2 billion-a-year apparel line...Colors wasn't the first magazine to present global issues in terms of actual lives, real people telling their stories, but it was the first to do so with a clothing catalog appended to it. At the back, sharing equal time with articles about Thailand's sex trade and the rain forest, were pages of models in Benetton's latest fashion."

Lines of business

 * 1) Apparel: casual and sport clothing, complementary products (accessories, shoes)
 * 2) Other activity: sale of raw materials, semi-finished products, industrial & advertising services, income & expenses from real estate

Brands

 * United Colors of Benetton
 * Undercolors of Benetton
 * Sisley
 * Playlife
 * Killer Loop

Suppliers
Production in Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Tunisia, China, Turkey.

Financial Information (as of DATE)
Ticker Symbol: BEN (Milan & Frankfurt), BNG (New York) Investor Website: http://www.benettongroup.com/investors/

List of largest shareholders
Live Company Fact Sheet, downloaded Feb. 6, 2008
 * Munder Capital Management: 0.06%
 * Global Index Advisors: 0.05%
 * ICC Capital Managment: 0.04%
 * Renaissance Technologies Corp.: 0.04%
 * Jane Street Capital LLC: 0.03%

Largest Shareholders

Breakdown of revenues
Sales by region 2006:
 * Asia: 12.1%
 * Americas: 3.3%
 * Europe: 84.2%
 * Rest of world: 0.4%

Executives

 * Gerolamo Caccia Dominioni

Board members & affiliations

 * Luciano Benetton, chairman
 * Alessandro Benetton, deputy chairman
 * Carlo Benetton, deputy chairman
 * Gilberto Benetton, director
 * Giuliana Benetton, director
 * Gianni Mion, director
 * Luigi Arturo Bianchi, independent director
 * Giorgio Alfredo Malguzzi, independent director
 * Robert Singer, independent director

Date & venue of next AGM
April 2008

Contact Information
Villa Minelli 31050 Ponzano Veneto Italy Tel.: 216 (73) 525 790 Fax: 216 (73) 525 792 Web site: http://www.benettongroup.com

Books on the Company
Mantle, Jonathan. 1999. Benetton: the family, the business and the brand London: Little, Brown.