The holiday season has always been a cross for Calisto Tanzi, founder of the Parmalat that led to the crack almost 20 years ago.
In fact, on 27 December 2003 he was arrested, after a mysterious trip to the capital of Ecuador, Quito, while the prosecutors of Milan and Parma took the first steps in the investigation that revealed in the following months and years the outline of the collapse of the food group of Collecchio.
Today, 18 years later, Calisto Tanzi has died at the age of 83. Always in the period of the Christmas holidays.
From growth to crash
He had founded Parmalat in the 1960s, transforming it into a colossus of food and milk. His business had ranged from football to tourism. But the exponential growth of the Collecchio company, fueled by excessive recourse to debt, especially bonds, has become the noose in which Parmalat has strangled itself. The group masked its state of distress with false documents, which certified the existence of a quantity of liquidity that in reality did not exist.
The crash affected not only the company, but also many international investors and Italian savers. But the reorganization of Parmalat, thanks to the action of Enrico Bondi, allowed in the following years – with differences between the various creditors and bondholders – a recovery of funds by creditors that in many other crashes would have been unthinkable.