In the motorcycle world, you can count on a few things happening every year: EICMA comes and goes, international roadracing starts in the mid-winter and ends late in the fall, and MV Agusta will issue a press release saying that now, NOW, the company’s money problems are finally solved.
The latest incident sees MV Agusta announcing another cash injection from the Sardarov family, who’s already pumped quite a bit of capital into the manufacturer. There are strings tied to the money; Timur Sardarov was already chairman of the board and CEO, but he’s also gotten Massimo Bordi into the executive vice chairman slot (he’s got years of experience with Ducati, Cagiva and MV Agusta under previous management), and Paolo Bettin is in as chief financial officer.
Giovanni Castigliono, who was the company’s president in the years following its buyback from Harley-Davidson, is now an advisor, not an official member of management. The times, they are a’changin!
The point of all this talk about restructuring and new money is to get the message out that MV Agusta is still in business. The company’s bigwigs say this latest financing is intended to focus MV Agusta’s attention on “developing the sales and service network, while investing in product development and maintaining its efforts in digitalization and technological innovation.”
Of course, we’ve heard this all before. The past few years have been filled with stories of MV Agusta’s financial woes and plans to rebuild, and yet the company has released nothing but high-priced rehashes of existing technology. Maybe that will change at this year’s EICMA show … and maybe it won’t.
