What Happened to Corvi, Benpac, Gallus & Heidelberg?

By Editor Morten B. Reitoft 

What happened to Benpac, Marco Corvi, Gallus, and Heidelberg? On January 31st, 2021, the cardhouse finally collapsed, and the deal between Benpac Holding and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen over the sales of Gallus finally came short. INKISH covered the story intensively, and our friends from Luzerner Zeitung with Journalist Christopher Gilb are now even nominated for his work, revealing the failed business agreement.

To be honest, I haven't been giving Mr. Marco Corvi and his companies many thoughts since we stopped covering the story, but this week a few things happened, which have re-initiated my interest in the story.

It started a few days ago where Marco Corvi's attorney Andreas Meili sent us an email. He wrote that he represents Marco Corvi, his legal interests, and asked us to remove three specific sentences from an article published more than six months ago. As he wrote quote on quote, "My client will not accept these massive damages to his personal rights any longer."

Instead of altering a six-monthly old article, we unpublished it - not because we are not confident that what we wrote was correct and accurate, but because the article has less newsworthiness anymore. But that opened a new chapter in the Marco Corvi saga, and we will re-open our investigations and bring new facts to the table. Whether Marco Corvi's reputation is damaged because of what we and other media write, I will leave up to you to judge, dear reader. Still, some facts could lead one to think that it's maybe more because of Marco Corvi's doings rather than what the media writes. 

Let's take a few examples. If you sign an agreement with the intent to buy Gallus and you end not doing so, you can ask why? We interviewed two recognized M&A people about the 'standards' in M&A, and both said that securing the buyer's ability to pay for a company is key before publishing an agreement. Marco Corvi apparently couldn't or wouldn't pay? 

Maybe Marco Corvi's feelings are hurt by being imposed by the fact that the acquisition didn't go through? But what about the people at Gallus, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, the legal advisors from GCA, Baker McKenzie, and all the employees of Benpac and both real and un-real companies - what about their feelings?

Six months later, we still get emails from employees with information about lack of money, lack of vision, lack of orders, lack of pretty much everything. Maybe Corvi should focus on getting his business up and running? With his claim of more than 3,000 employees, it must be complex to operate Benpac with almost no products - or at least no products to be found on any website? 

And speaking of websites. The www.amslerequipment.com website has been down for a long time. The www.benpac.com website continues to have critical open positions, and even the local government of Urner Regiering raise concerns over Benpac in public.

And tons of questions remain open. When Benpac failed to complete the acquisition by the first deadline end of December 2020, Marco Corvi issued personal notarized Acknowledgements for 120 million Euros. That is and was crazy by all means since he most likely doesn't have assets to back these acknowledgements, but more importantly few days after the deal failed, he now announced the acquisition of the Italian OMV Machinery company. I can't help wondering if Heidelberger Druckmaschinen has tried to cash in on these or sought compensation for the failed deal, and how strange must it be to continue having Benpac as a tenant in St. Gallen?

Where does this leave Heidelberger Druckmaschinen? We will soon see their books for the entire 2020/2021. Still, the preliminary information indicates Heidelberger Druckmaschinen to have a better result than expected - I can't wait to look into their annual report!

For Gallus - I don't know, and personally don't care, but it must be quite a challenge to go to market with so much uncertainty. 

But thank you for bringing Corvi back to our attention - and let's see what interesting stories the future will bring. 

Let the music play!