The Italian state now owns 30% of Coin — the price of a century of department stores

Coin, the Veneto department-store chain founded more than a century ago by Vittorio Coin, entered Italy's negotiated composition of the crisis in June 2024 — the pre-insolvency instrument that lets a company bargain with creditors while it keeps trading. The arithmetic behind it: turnover down from about €300 million to €250 million, some €80 million of accumulated debt by the end of 2024, later reported as roughly €240 million of debt against €280 million of revenue, with 330 supplier agreements negotiated to buy time.

The shrinkage ran through the store network. Grugliasco closed in January 2025; seven more closures announced in December 2024 — Rome Lunghezza and Bufalotta, San Donà di Piave, Latina, Vicenza, Milan City Life, Sesto Fiorentino — took 92 jobs; and in April 2025 management announced eight more underperforming direct stores, four of them in Rome. Across 34 direct stores, 1,390 employees were exposed; a union deal channelled staff toward transfers and other roles instead of redundancies.

The rescue, in April 2025, brought the state into the shareholder register. Invitalia, the investment arm of the economy ministry, put €10 million from the enterprise safeguard fund into Coin for a 30.1% minority stake, capped at five years, intended above all to reassure creditors. Sagitta SGR, MIA SGR and new shareholders added €21 million. The plan filed with the ministry targets a return to profit by 2026 through optimised selling space and a revised product mix.

The shape of the case is the mid-market department-store problem common across Europe: squeezed between online retail and low-cost giants, only big-city and luxury-leaning formats are reliably surviving. Coin's restructuring manages that squeeze; it did not cause it and cannot repeal it.