About this episode

Paolo Poma discusses his experiences navigating financial challenges at Ducati and how they shaped his leadership at Lamborghini.

In early 2009, Paolo Poma found himself navigating what he recalls as a “really tough” period. At the time, he was helping steer Ducati through a leveraged buyout negotiated before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Debt obligations had arrived just as markets were “plummeting,” Poma tells us, while lenders closely monitored covenant compliance and private equity owners pressed ahead with the deal. Poma remembers sitting with bankers and shareholders through repeated discussions about liquidity, budgets, and cash generation. “Planning cash was crucial because covenants on cash were really tight,” he tells us. The experience forced him to balance operational performance with financial discipline while uncertainty spread across global markets. Ducati ultimately avoided breaking its covenants, Poma tells us, and the period became one of the defining stretches of his finance career. The challenge also reinforced the leadership style that would later shape his tenure at Lamborghini. Trained originally as an engineer, Poma tells us he built his finance career by combining analytical rigor with business understanding. He later expanded his responsibilities from controlling to investor…

People in this episode

Guest: Paolo Poma

Topics covered

• financial discipline
• luxury growth
• leadership style
• cash management
• operational performance

Keywords

• CFO
• financial discipline
• luxury growth
• Ducati
• Lamborghini
• cash management
• leadership

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Lamborghini, Ducati, Lehman Brothers, private equity

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