Saw this last week erm...somewhere...
"Struggling Italian coachbuilder Bertone has found a buyer with days to spare before a bankruptcy court hearing that could have closed the iconic company after 95 years.
Bertone’s new owner is Gruppo Prototipo, the Turin-based outfit that owns Italy's Nardo high speed test facility and specialises in trialling pre-production vehicles. Since the late '90s, Gruppo Prototipo has been a sub-contractor for most of Fiat’s testing requirements.
The takeover announcement surprised the Italian business community today; many analysts expected Bertone to slip under after the company filed for bankruptcy protection having made €37 million losses in three years. Negotiations for a Fiat buy-out had also fallen flat.
For now the Italian government, which has been subsidising Bertone’s 1300-strong workforce, has agreed to extend the two-years' financial protection granted to the company for an additional two months."
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Just checked La Stampa,Turin's newspaper,and translated the page with a online translator,looks like the above has fallen through,and they are indeed bankrupt...
The failure is wanted to be avoided
TORINO
The Bertone family, owner of the historical Turinese auto body, gets ready to itself to exit of scene, starting for the company one concorsuale procedure. Against this news, communicated to the Amma (the association of the enterprises metal worker and mechanics of Turin), today approximately 600 workers is come down in public square and has carried out street blocks for two hours in front of the plant of Grugliasco.
During the protest they have been tension moments when some motorists have tried to exceed the block and a worker has been hit without to bring back wounded. The intention of the family is that one to avoid the failure being started the agreed estimate or the extraordinary administration. The 1,300 workers are in unemployment compensation in exception until 31 December and it has not been started some procedure of mobility.
“The situation - the Mendola of the Fiom comments Linen - is much serious one. The workers have made all what she had been they asked and today they find without one solution of occupational industrial character and therefore. The company, because of a management not to the height, and the institutions have not been in a position to finding one solution. And the world of the enterprises has till now not struck eyelash”.
“That that is happened unfortunately not astonishes us - George Airaudo observes, general secretary of the Turinese Fiom - because an industrial solution lacks for a long time, although the tried ones you of the property and without of this not there is future. We have asked the Amma to start the comparison for ricollocare the workers in other enterprises, based on the agreement already caught up with the Pininfarina and to the availabilities of Fiat of Marchionne”.
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