Made in Italy hidden champions: an analysis of three growing industries

Abstract

This dissertation will deal with the analysis of Made in Italy hidden champions in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and chemical industries. These industries have been selected because they have shown the biggest growth rate in the last years. The analysis aims at understanding how these companies faced the challenges inside their sectors and the higher competitiveness which characterized them. The first part is based on Hermann Simon’s studies of hidden champions’ phenomenon and it presents the explanations of their characteristics and the criteria used to classify a company as an hidden champion. The second part is devoted to the analysis of the three selected sectors and to the introduction of Italian hidden champions. Hermann Simon’s criteria have been used to select the companies and other two thresholds, average revenues growth over 10% and average EBITDA growth over 5%, have been added in order to focus on the best hidden champions. Moreover, reports of Farmindustria, Federchimica, Cosmetica Italia and companies’ websites have been taken into consideration to highlight the most important trends. The last part presents the selected companies performances in order to understand how these companies underpinned competitiveness in the selected period.