The online travel portal puts money back and reorganizes the management. The steps are also intended to reassure dissatisfied investors.
Business is going well at the Ticino-based travel provider Lastminute.com – but ongoing proceedings for short-time work are weighing on management.
Lastminute.com, one of the largest online travel portals in Europe, is drawing consequences from the affair about possible misuse of Covid short-time work benefits. After an internal investigation, the Chiasso-based company decided to set aside CHF 34 million. This money should be enough to meet a possible request from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) to repay all short-time work benefits received during the corona pandemic.
New heads in the board of directors and management
The case now also leads to a chair back in the board of directors and in the management of the company. In recent weeks, activist investors who hold small stakes in Lastminute.com have expressed dissatisfaction with developments at the company. They called for changes and also brought up a possible sale of the company.
Now the company’s founder and former CEO, Fabio Cannavale, and the former number two in management, Andrea Bertoli, will definitely step down from the board of directors. The two managers were taken into custody by the Ticino public prosecutor’s office in July, which started the affair. The Chairman of the Board of Directors, Laurent Foata, and three other Board members have also offered to resign.
Instead, six new members are to be elected to the board of directors of the Chiasso-based company. Among them is Luca Concone, who will also act as CEO of Lastminute.com in the future. He replaces Laura Amoretti, who had managed the company on an interim basis since the affair broke out.
Harsh action by the judiciary
Lastminute.com is the most prominent case so far in which the Swiss authorities are taking action against possible misuse of short-time work benefits during the corona pandemic. The fact that two of the company’s top managers were taken into custody caused a stir. The coercive measure was extended several times by the magistrate. One reason for this may have been that Cannavale and Bertoli live in Italy. After around four months in custody, the two are now free again, as was announced.
The case against the two former Lastminute.com executives has not yet led to charges. It is still not known in detail what the Ticino public prosecutor is accusing them of. However, criminal proceedings could revolve around the fact that employees of Lastminute.com subsidiaries were registered for short-time work, but then worked more hours. Many employees of the Ticino company come from Italy and are likely to have worked in the home office after the outbreak of the pandemic.
Authorities can reclaim short-time work benefits
Separate from this is an administrative investigation by the authorities. Seco can reclaim short-time work benefits in full if companies have not met certain administrative requirements – for example, if they did not have a suitable time recording system. The provision of CHF 34 million that Lastminute.com has now formed apparently relates to this aspect. A possible criminal case, on the other hand, would be directed against former executives Cannavale and Bertoli.
The provision results in Lastminute.com falling into the red in the third fiscal quarter of 2022. Operationally, however, the company is doing well. After the corona pandemic subsided, bookings on the online portals that Lastminute.com operates in many European countries have increased significantly again. In the first nine months, revenue was 242 million francs, the operating profit (Ebitda) reached 36 million francs.