The encyclopedia · Finance & Accounting · Financial decision · 1857–2018
Borsalino made hats for 160 years — then bad ownership killed it
The Italian hat maker that defined 20th-century style was declared bankrupt in 2017 and sold for €6.4M — 160 years of heritage at a Manhattan apartment price.
Borsalino · Haeres Equita · 2017-12-18
What happened
Borsalino was founded on 4 April 1857 by Giuseppe Borsalino in Alessandria, Piedmont. By the early 20th century, the factory was producing two million hats annually and employed 2,500 workers. The Borsalino fedora became a global icon — worn by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, by Italian movie stars, and by anyone who wanted to look like they had arrived. In 1900, the company won the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition, the highest honour for craftsmanship.
The Borsalino family ran the company for 130 years through two world wars, the Great Depression, and the rise of Italian industrialisation. In 1987, the last family descendant, Vittorio Vaccarino, sold the company to a group of Milanese entrepreneurs. Over the following decades, the brand changed hands multiple times, eventually coming under the control of Marco Marenco, a financier with no background in hat-making.
Marenco's tenure was a disaster. He was implicated in a €3.5B financial scandal that drew criminal investigations. By 2016, Borsalino was under court-supervised administration as debts mounted. On 18 December 2017, the Court of Alessandria declared Borsalino Giuseppe e Fratello Spa bankrupt. In July 2018, the company was sold in a court auction for €6.4 million to Haeres Equita, a special situations fund that had been managing the brand since 2016. The factory in Alessandria survived, but the company that once defined hat-making for the world had lost its independence at a fire-sale price.
Why it happened
- The departure of family ownership after 130 years severed the stewardship that had guided Borsalino through wars and depressions — the new financier-owners had no connection to hat-making.
- Marco Marenco's ownership was catastrophic — he was a financier, not a manufacturer, and his involvement in a €3.5 billion financial scandal drained the company's resources and attention.
- Hat-wearing declined from universal daily habit to niche accessory, and Borsalino's traditional Italian manufacturing could not compete with mass-produced alternatives from Asia.
The lesson
A 160-year heritage is worthless without a steward who understands it. Borsalino survived world wars and the Great Depression — but not a financier who saw it as an asset, not an institution.
Aftermath
Haeres Equita kept the factory in Alessandria running and continued hat production. Today Borsalino still exists, making hats for a niche luxury market. But the company that once produced two million hats a year and employed 2,500 people now operates at a fraction of that scale. The brand that defined the fedora — worn by Humphrey Bogart — is now a small operation under a special situations fund. Borsalino's decline is a case study in how heritage brands die not from market forces alone, but from financial mismanagement and the disappearance of the culture that sustained them.
Sources
spotted an error? The club wants to know.
More like this
Moreschi, 78 years of Vigevano's handmade shoes, was wound up under a Swiss fund's watch
Missoni was Italy's knitwear royalty — then the family lost control
La Perla, Italy's lingerie icon, split between a UK holding and a Bologna factory
Somewhere, someone solved the problem this company failed at. 2nd Opinion →
Comments · 0
Sign in to join the comments.