MCH Group: Restructuring continues
Hardly anyone was surprised by the 35 redundancies announced at the MCH Group on Friday. The most surprising thing was that there were not more. In 2017, the MCH Group still had more than 1000 employees worldwide, 350 of them at the American MC2 alone. What happens now?
Over the next few months, there will be 35 redundancies at the Basel, Zurich, Hong Kong and US sites.
Is the SIX Swiss Exchange listed MCH Group now a takeover candidate? But who wanted to take over a company with no growth prospects? It is not only homemade mistakes that the MCH Group is now paying dearly for. It's also the small Swiss market, which can only cope with a few, small trade fairs. Then there is also the transformation of the economy, caused among other things by digitization, which is calling into question the previous form of exhibitions, long the primary marketing tool for the manufacturing industry. Finally, the exhibiting industry no longer has the budgets to finance the high cost of trade shows compared to other channels, social networks for example. There is simply no money to do so. The transformation of the trade show industry, especially within Swiss borders, is still to come.
According to the press release of 25 January 2019, the MCH Group has drawn up a social plan "as part of the necessary restructuring process". And what else is the Board of Directors actually doing?
Will there be more layoffs? It is to be expected. Much would already have been achieved if a buyer could be found for the expensive exhibition center in Basel. Then the MCH Group would be able to concentrate fully on its core business of staging exhibitions (which are relatively small in Switzerland).
