Welcome to Beatalks The Shapers, the podcast for those who don't wait for the future, they shape it. I am Barbara Cassinelli and in this episode we meet Giovanni Tamburi. Welcome Giovanni.
Good morning. Welcome everyone.
Romano, a degree in economics with honors. CEO at 36, today founder, chairman and CEO of Tamburi Investment Partners. A life dedicated to investing in the best Italian companies with a long-term perspective, enterprising, lucky, as he defines himself, and with a passion for writing books, his golden rule: zero debt.
And now we'll delve a little into discovering everything. So, let's start from when you were 36 and already at Euromobiliare. The question I want to ask you is: was it all your own merit or was there someone who believed in you and helped you along your growth path?
No, no, no. They believed in me a lot. I did my part, but if I hadn't had very good mentors, both before Euromobiliare and at Euromobiliare, who believed in me, not only that, but at Euromobiliare for example they wanted someone to launch the M&A, mergers and acquisitions sector because in Italy in the 80s it wasn't found, actually at the beginning of the 80s, late 70s I was at Bastogi and I was a young journeyman at Bastogi. After looking around a bit, they turned to me and said, 'Well, you come, we can't find anyone better, we'll pay for courses around the world for you' and they paid for courses around the world for me. 'We'll train you, we'll make you study, we'll give you all the necessary tools because clearly for what we need you don't have the right skills, the right experience, and we'll bet together.' I said yes, I thanked them very much because certainly it wasn't easy to find someone who invested in me so much, and so the great merit is certainly theirs, not mine.
You have been called the Italian Warren Buffett for your patient investment strategy. At the basis of TIP there is an approach that we can define particular, that is, investing as a minority shareholder with a long-term vision. What is the rationale for this choice and how do you exercise influence without direct control?
Well, our formula was born because we trust entrepreneurs, perhaps we trust them more than they trust themselves. Private equity funds that typically do majority operations, even in many cases with leverage, so by putting debt, take for granted that the presumption of the fund manager is such that he is able to put the right people, make the right business model, make the right strategy, etc. etc. What I instead in the first part of my life, the one more based on M&A, understood, is that we should give trust to entrepreneurs who were already good in themselves, who need an extra support, but not to be replaced and not to have someone who sends the CFO, appoints the CEO, appoints the general manager. So this was a formula that at the beginning was heavily criticized because clearly it is difficult in an Italy of the 90s to tell this story and have positive feedback from this story. We tried, it went well. The second part of your question is how to exercise influence, the very right word influence through listening. I believe that when you talk to an entrepreneur who is typically alone, who typically compares himself with family or with the accountant, with the banker, etc. etc., he never has someone with whom to have a discussion, so to speak, on equal terms, because that someone who bet as a minority in your company, leaving you the entrepreneur the majority, means that he blindly trusts you, so you are in his hands and he is in yours and this allows us to go forward very well. At least for us it has allowed us in almost 30 years as investors to go forward very very well. You have to be very careful, very scrupulous. Earlier someone pointed out that I had noticed a detail of a person participating here today. So, you really have to be very careful, listen to yourself, listen to others, never be presumptuous, never be the one who gives the little lecture. That's what entrepreneurs or managers of a certain level cannot stand: that someone comes from a famous university or because they went to an exceptional consulting school and gives the lesson. They should give the lesson to us. They know how to make the product, they know how to run their business. These, in my opinion, are the right recipes for doing this job. Bending Spoons is among other things one of the realities...
With which, in short, with TIP you invested at the time, what did you see in B and therefore in its entrepreneur?
Well, the story would be very long to tell. We had entered a company called Data Service, which had problems one day. The person for whom, because there too we bet, we invested in a person, Rocco Sabelli was called to Alitalia and so I found myself, let's say, as an important, almost exclusive investor of this company having to replace the management. I remembered that a few years earlier with Carlo and Stefano Hackerman we had done a startup operation, right here in the right place, which went very well, then we sold the company to Reply, both Carlo and Stefano went elsewhere etc., so I called them and said, 'Why don't you give me a hand? Because you are among the closest people I have known in my life in this sector.' Carlo immediately said yes. Stefano, who was president of Capitale Informatica, so he had a terrifying, very important career, was a bit more reluctant because he said 'But I'm very well here, I have an incredible position, Stefano was very young at the time.' Then with Carlo we convinced him, he came and they did a masterpiece. They were very good, they multiplied revenue, profits. Moreover, the company at the time didn't even make money, it was in loss, so they were very good in organizational aspects, very good in strategic aspects, and from a commercial point of view Stefano is truly monstrously good. So that's the story.
When the moment of sale comes, selling the company, how much is the entrepreneur's decision, how much is also a co-decision, co-evaluation with TIP in this case?
But you know, we never sell anything. That is, out of 6 or 7 billion in value today including club deals we have done, we would have sold for a few hundred million. So we don't have the perspective of a fund that must buy to sell, but also the B operation was an operation to merge B into Engineering and do an operation that had industrial sense, and we remained shareholders along with the Hackerman family. So that too was an intelligent evolution, honestly profitable, but to make the system even better on an even larger scale. Returning to your question, first of all we never put in contracts, as almost all private equity operators do, the clause that if you don't exit within a certain period, we automatically have the mandate to put the company up for sale. Absolutely not. That is the most frustrating thing an entrepreneur can have. If there are decisions to sell, and we have sold some things over the years, we take it together, we decide together when is the right time, what is the right way, what is the way that does not disturb the company. We always put the company at the center of our attention, we never put ourselves or the entrepreneur, but it is the company that pays our salary and the company must be the heart of everything.
And what are the sectors and realities in which TIP invests? Do you always try to have a certain, let's say, balance and sector diversity within the portfolio or is it not a...
No, absolutely not. We look for the good ones. If tomorrow morning I realize that you are very good at making pinstripe jackets, we'll talk and maybe spend a few years together. Moreover, speaking of years, we have some investments for 24 years. Many of our investments, the bulk of our portfolio today has a period of 12, 13, 14 years. Moncler, Amplifon, these types of companies we have been in for really many years, we have no intention of saying run away or take home the enormous profits that theoretically on paper we have made.
Today, the entrepreneurial talent of our country, do you see it particularly somewhere, in some sector, in some excellence?
But they are all good, they are all good. We are good at making these tables because in design we are the first in the world, we are good in robotics, we are good in electromechanics, we are good in many things, right? I think categorizing things is always a bit too generic, always a bit too superficial. I think we need to go into the individual reality and discover who is better and who is less good.
Listing on the stock exchange for TIP: was it a turning point, a milestone, or was it, how to say, a shift, a new starting point from which to start again?
