New challenges, new international orders, innovation through the most advanced technology, new collaborations with important names in the world of design: the crisis does not scare Targetti Poulsen as it prepares to face 2010 with renewed energy. And on the eve of the new year, it renews its management, completing the generational transition of the family that has guided the company for 85 years, and reinforces its team by adding a new CEO.

 

Lorenzo Targetti, as President, is now at the helm of the Targetti Poulsen Group. Grandson of the company’s founder and son of the Past-President Paolo Targetti, Lorenzo (born in 1967) began working in the family business in 1993 after obtaining a degree in Economics and working in the advertising market in the USA.
He was marketing director of Targetti until 1997, the year in which he was appointed CEO. Over the past ten years, he has steered the company towards important goals such as the listing on the Milan Stock Exchange in 1998, the increased presence on international markets and development of an innovative business model based on the creation of a specialised company network operating in various sectors of indoor and outdoor lighting.
Under his guidance, the Targetti Group has also made some important acquisitions, the last of which (the purchase of the Danish company, Louis Poulsen Lighting) made the Group (renamed Targetti Poulsen Group) the third largest European player in the field of architectural lighting. In 2007, he received the “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year” award.

 

“After 52 years working in the company, I feel it is time for me to leave the operating area,” declared Paolo Targetti. “If I look back over the past 16 years since my son Lorenzo entered the company, I can only see a constant growth that has brought Targetti from just over 200 employees to the current 1350 and from a turnover of 25 million to almost 300 million in 2008. Therefore, all the conditions are in place,” he added, “to proudly hand over the Presidency of the Group to him with much serenity.”

 

Lorenzo Targetti named Enrico Basso to join him as CEO. Born in Parma, Basso, 58 years of age, has a Law Degree and extensive experience in managing Italian and international companies such as Fidenza Vetraria and Superbox. He came to Targetti from the Seves Group, a world leader in the sector of electrical insulators and glass bricks, of which he was co-founder, shareholder and CEO. 

 

“I am certain that Enrico Basso’s vast experience will contribute significantly to reinforcing our management,” declared Lorenzo Targetti. “I am happy to know,” he added, “that I can count on his help to face future challenges, along with the excellent management team who has worked alongside me for many years and who has led the Group to reach important goals as well as to overcome difficult moments, such as the current economic crisis. In conducting Targetti Poulsen  I will be guided by the same values that have always inspired my father, Paolo, with whom I had the privilege of undertaking an extraordinary entrepreneurial adventure I am proud to continue”.