FICO closes: Farinetti & Co.'s bankruptcy

A waste of a mountain of money. Even public money. This useless amusement park, built with the complicity of Coop, has never attracted visitors.

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flop cool bologna

FICO is closing. After years of losses, and without a real project worthy of the name, the so-called Disneyland of food, just outside Bologna, is throwing in the towel. A flop that's been predicted for a long time.

FICO CLOSES

FICO closes with three protagonists of its failure: first of all Oscar Farinetti, a supposed visionary entrepreneur who in the meantime continues to dispense lessons with his books (the latest is entitled 10 moves to face the future and who knows if FICO is one of them); local governments, from municipalities to regions, who have wasted money and land without any guarantees; and the COOP community, a strong supporter of the project that ended up in ruins.

FLOP FICO

Since it opened, FICO has done nothing but rack up losses. Tens of millions of euros. Farinetti, who always thought he had a magic wand, has taken over the Bologna amusement park and handed it over to one of his three sons, Andrea, as president, and Piero Bagnasco, his trusted manager, as CEO. Another disaster, adding to the previous ones.

FICO FANTASMA FOUNDATION

Always supported by the hulk of newspapers that pamper his supposed entrepreneurial prowess, Farinetti has announced he will make new investments of €15 million (will they ever arrive? And what purpose will they serve to prevent further waste?) and, under the new management, which leaves Coop on the sidelines as a minority shareholder, admission will be free. They've never worked anyway. The only thing Farinetti doesn't fully explain is the favor he's reportedly receiving from the Bologna city government to build new housing in the gigantic FICO area. Perhaps this, a real estate transaction, could be the true future profitability of the FICO project. The Italian tycoon also intends for the FICO Foundation to play a key role in FICO's relaunch, aiming to "enhance agricultural production models and promote food knowledge." Then, going to its website, you discover that its last event trumpeted online dates back to February 5, 2021 (sic!).

flop cool bologna

 

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FICO EATALY WORLD

FICO's flop directly involves Oscar Farinetti, which has always boasted of having great expertise in this sector, and the cooperatives, particularly Coop Alleanza, which risk adding the losses of Italian Disneyland to their problems in other sectors.

FICO has no connection with the territory and, also for the lack of fast connections to Bologna And first and foremost with Milan, it risks increasingly becoming a cathedral in the desert. Indeed, the mayors are opposed to this amusement park-like development of the food industry, which risks only paving the way for a new wave of supermarkets and hypermarkets, as if quality were always and only a matter of sales.

The format is typical of an American city, but without even a shred of decent public transportation that makes the park accessible at reasonable prices. The scientific level is very low, and the much-heralded laboratories have no effectiveness.

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FICO WORK BOLOGNA

For the moment, the money paid by the citizens is paying the bill for this megalomaniac operation, on which the public investment should then be calculated. workers. Already 90 fixed-term contracts for FICO employees they jumpedAnd a question is circulating in Bologna: wasn't Farinetti the modern, worker-friendly entrepreneur who called entrepreneurs who didn't stabilize temporary workers "bastards"? Perhaps he changed his mind after the FICO experience. We had doubts from the start, and today we can say that, with this formula and this step, FICO, rejected by the international press, he won't be able to hold on for long.

flop cool bologna farinetti eataly 3

(Image credits: Luca Lorenzelli/Shutterstock.com)

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