MILAN, Italy: Gildo Zegna, grandson of the eponymous fashion brand’s founder Ermenegildo Zegna, will hand over the reins of the group to its finance director and the fourth generation of family leaders in January, the group announced Monday.
But the Italian company’s stock fell in opening trading in New York after the news that chief financial officer Gianluca Tagliabue would take over as chief executive from the 70-year-old Zegna, who has run the group for two decades.
It is under Gildo Zegna’s control that the company has taken on the Thom Browne and Tom Ford Fashion brands and in 2021 became the first Italian luxury group to be listed in New York.
Gildo Zegna, whose grandfather set up the company in 1910, will remain as executive chairman and oversee the group’s integrated textile production, which is considered one of its strong points.
Zegna’s sons, Edoardo and Angelo, will manage the male ready-to-wear Zegna brand, which in 2024 accounted for two-thirds of the group’s revenue.
After the group statement came out, Ermenegildo Zegna shares fell by nearly one percent in New York, where 24.6 percent of the group’s stock is traded.
The group’s turnover fell two percent, against 2024, in the first nine months of the year to 1.33 billion euros ($1.49 billion).
Zegna blamed the fall on lower sales in China and by its Thom Browne brand.
It said at a presentation in October that it was counting on its established well-heeled clients, ready to spend more than 50,000 euros a year on clothes, to accelerate growth. It has set the target of almost doubling turnover to 2.2 billion to 2.4 billion euros by 2027.
The group, which employed 7,400 workers at the end of 2024, is to open a new leather factory near the northern Italian city of Parma in 2026.
