Luxury Italian car maker Ferrari yesterday announced record results – just as its home economy hit the skids.
Turnover accelerated to E1.65 BILLION (£1.1billion) for the first nine months of the year – an increase of 18.9 per cent on 2010 – and profits hit £181 million.
But the supercar boom comes as Italy threatens to become the next victim of the Eurozone debt crisis.
The country, run by under-fire Silvio Berlusconi, has debt standing at £1.6 TRILLION – 120 per cent of its GDP.
Despite the austere times, Ferrari has had no trouble shifting its luxury motors, which cost between £146,000 and £225,000.
It has sold 5,165 cars this year, with 384 of these coming in the UK – an increase of 21 per cent on 2010.
The US is the company’s biggest market, selling 1,436 models with China the second most popular with 542 sales.
If sales continue at their current rate, Ferrari could break the 7,000 mark for the first time in its history. They also announced cash reserves of around £575 million.
And sales are expected to increase further next year with the newly launched Ferrari FF and Ferrari 458 Spider.
A statement from Ferrari described the results as ”truly extraordinary” considering the ”uncertainty of the world economy”.
No suprise really, since while most of us are looking at redundancy, pay cuts and general hardship, top company bosses somehow seem to be getting 20 – 40% pay rises and 7 figure salaries, seemingly regardless of whether they are doing a good job or not and possibly as a reward for saving money by cutting salaries and laying off staff.
Greed, the cancer of the world.
I totally agree with anons comments, the rich get richer and poor get poorer