Economy – Amongst the financial news to make headlines this week, Lavazza led the way. Articles described how the company continues to expand across North America, thanks in part, as the English language press explained, to its recent 650 million dollar takeover of Mars Inc (October 1 in New York Times – Lavazza Acquires Mars Inc. Coffee Business*; Lavazza Swallows Mars Inc Coffee Business for Around $650 Million; the Washington Post – Lavazza acquires Mars Inc. coffee business*; Reuters – Lavazza swallows Mars Inc coffee business for around $650 million).
Another company with growth on its horizons is EssilorLuxottica, born of the union between Italy’s leading eyeglass company and the French sectorial giant, now ready to conquer a market with 2.5 billion potential clients (Le Monde, October 2 – EssilorLuxottica à la conquête d’un marché de 2,5 milliards de clients). As to the luxury sector, Bloomberg wrote about Gucci’s plan to win over the millenials (October 1 – Millennials Love Luxury and Their Spending on Gucci Shows It*) and then it wrote how a few lucky Ferrari clients are being rewarded for their custom with a very special prize (October 2 – Ferrari Picks 499 ‘Lucky’ Clients for Its $1.85 Million Monza*). It was luxury electric style that featured in an article in Der Standard about the new 2 million Euro “supercar “that Pininfarina has in the pipeline (September 29 – Pininfarina will Elektro-Sportwagen um zwei Millionen Euro bauen).
Culture – On Italian culture, The Guardian wrote about the rivalry between Mantegna and Bellini and the exhibition at London’s National Gallery where their works are being shown together for the first time ever (September 28 – Brothers in art: the Renaissance rivalry of Mantegna and Bellini). Meantime El Mundo was at the first retrospective of Luigi Ghirri to be mounted outside Italy – at the Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid – describing the Italian photographer as a genius protagonist of a manifesto against snobbery (September 27 – Luigi Ghirri: el genio que pudo ser; October 1- Luigi Ghirri: Un ‘manifiesto’ contra el esnobismo). The Financial Times set out to explain how Parma’s Verdi Festival Verdi has grown in recent years (October 2 – A fascinating Le Trouvère at Parma’s Festival Verdi*) whilst both the Financial Times and the New York Times took time to remember the extraordinary talent of “publishing titan” Inge Feltrinelli (September 28 – Inge Feltrinelli, photographer and publisher, 1930-2018; Inge Feltrinelli Dies at 87; Publishing Titan Started With a Camera). Then Le Monde remembered the Italian composer Stelvio Cipriani who was responsible for the soundtracks of more than 250 movies (October 3 – Le musicien Stelvio Cipriani est mort).
Tourism, Food & Wine The New York Times was in Apulia to visit the luxurious Borgo Egnazia (September 28 – An Italian Hotelier Mixes Opulence and Wellness (O.K., Plus More Opulence*) whilst the same daily ran another article featuring a night out in Bologna and the “magic” of Matera as part of it series on 52 places to visit in 2018 (October 2 – The 52 Places Traveler: Two Versions of the Slow Life in Central and Southern Italy*). The same American paper offered readers another piece with an Italian focus when writing about smoked “burrata” (October 1 – An Alert for Cheese Fanatics: Smoked Burrata), whilst the Washington Post described how to take it easy on the island of Linosa (October 2 – On tiny Linosa, it’s easy to adopt island’s relaxed rhythms*). A couple of German language papers were up in the north of Italy, with Handelsblatt, writing about the world tiramisu championship taking place in Treviso between November 1 and 4 (October 1 – Treviso sucht den Tiramisu-Weltmeister), whilst the Sueddeutsche Zeitung was out and about in Bressanone (October 3 – Südtirols Seele).
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