The Logos online translation company is now one of the biggest in Europe
CNN Spanish edition 26/05/2000

The Italian-based Logos Group had only three staff in a typing pool when Rodrigo Vergara, a Chilean exile, joined it more than 20 years ago before rising to become the Chairman of one of the top European web-based translation providers.
"The Logos Group now numbers 18 companies based in the United Kingdom, USA, France and Belgium and a worldwide network of about 3,000 translation professionals in contact with the city of Modena, home to the company's group headquarters", Vergara told Reuters in an interview.

The company had originally planned to float the company on the high-growth Nuovo Mercato stock exchange in Milan, but put off the IPO due to the current hostility of the market. "We were ready for our public offering in late May/early June but our banking specialists advised us that the volatile market would force us to sell our shares at what was, for us, too low a price", explained Vergara. "Hence we decided to wait until the Autumn (in northern Europe) or the beginning of next year. We are in no hurry, cash flow is certainly not a problem and we will continue to pursue our strategy of expansion without any immediate help from the stock market", he added. "We want to float 20% of our capital", stated Vergara.

The Chairman added that the company posted total commercial revenues in excess of USD 11.3m in 1999 with an EBITDA margin of 29% and 14.5% net earnings. 48-year-old Vergara, a Chilean exile, came to Italy at the end of 1973 after the bloody coup that gave Augusto Pinochet control of the country, a position that he held until 1990. While a student at the University of Bologna, he fell in love with the city of Modena, home of the Ferrari and tenor Luciano Pavarotti, and decided to stay there for good, using his knowledge of Spanish to find work as a translator.

"Logos was just a small company when I arrived a few months after its inception in 1979. It was a very small-time affair undertaking commercial and technical translations for local customers. We only had three typists, the electric typewriter seemed terribly futuristic at the time", he said.

"As a result of the pioneering technology we now use, I believe we are one of, if not the, biggest translation company in the Internet field in Europe", he added.