Italian investment bank Mediobanca held its firsts annual ‘Fashion Talk’, presenting the results of a fashion industry study, called Focus Moda, carried out by its research department. The study analysed the 2013-2017 results for 163 Italian fashion companies with annual revenue above €100 million (in the 2017 financial year), and compared the results of the top 15 of them with those of other leading European groups.

The aggregate added value generated by the 163 companies examined was equivalent to 1.3 per cent of Italy's GDP in 2017, an increase of 0.2 per cent compared to 2013. Notably, one third of the companies’ aggregate revenue was generated by 66 foreign-owned firms, chiefly owned by groups from France (26 companies), Switzerland (6), the USA (6) and the UK. Of the 163 companies surveyed, 48 per cent are based in the North of Italy, while the most highly represented market sectors were apparel, leather goods and eyewear.

The top 15 companies in the sample, all of them above the €900 million revenue mark in 2017, recorded higher profitability than the remaining companies, though it decreased slightly over the five-year period. Smaller companies, whose EBIT rose in the period, instead posted an average annual revenue rise that was higher than that of the top 15. It is interesting to note that, in 2013, 77.7 per cent of the sample's net income was generated by the top 15 firms, but the share fell to 56.2 per cent in 2017.