Paolo Poma is uncertain how many times he met with bankers and investors during the first 6 months of 2009.
The steady string of phone calls and conference rooms that once demanded the management of Ducati Motors Holding’s rapt attention, Poma tells us, have now blurred into a single, heart-pumping conversation.
“I had to go in front of them and calculate for how long we were going be able to service the debt and comply with covenants without breaking any rules—despite the plummeting markets,” explains Poma, who had joined Ducati 2 years earlier as finance director.
An Italian motorcycle manufacturer, the firm had been acquired by a private equity investor in 2008 as part of a leveraged buyout on the eve of the banking sector’s 2008 financial crisis.
Reports Poma: “The debt had been negotiated before Lehman’s collapse and now had to be serviced during this very challenging time.”
On one side of the table, Ducati’s investors were expressing their eagerness to keep things moving forward, while on the other, their bankers were continuing to urge caution.
“At first, the banks were worried about getting their money back, but then it became kind of a strange situation in which they saw Ducati’s KPIs improving despite the circumstances, so they became no longer in such a hurry to get their money back,” recalls Poma, who was named deputy CFO later in 2009 upon the resignation of Ducati’s CFO, who was Poma’s then-boss. Poma would serve two years in the deputy capacity before being named Ducati CFO in 2011.
In 2015, when Volkswagen’s Audi division announced that it was buying Ducati, Poma was asked to serve as CFO of Volkswagen Group Italia, an indication that he had made a positive impression on Ducati’s new owner.
For Poma, no matter what the next career chapter may be, the lessons from 2009 will always linger.
He comments: “Many times, I thought, ‘Why not quit?!’—but after looking back, I would now tell myself, ‘Stay where you are! You are in a place where you are really going to grow a lot.’” –Jack Sweeney
