Troubled waters at home Cattolica Insurance. After months of internal tensions, with the former CEO Alberto Minali surprisingly defenestrated last November, the Veronese company seemed to have found peace with the very recent green light from the assembly to the transformation from a cooperative into a joint stock company, which opens the door to the already agreed merger with Generali. Instead, the day after the shareholders' meeting on Friday, bad news arrived: the Guardia di Finanza carried out a search of the Cattolica Assicurazioni headquarters, for the acquisition of documents following inspections by Consob and on the mandate of the Verona Public Prosecutor, notifying also three guarantee information to the president of the board Paolo Bedonito the general manager Charles Ferrara and to the secretary of the board Alessandro lai.
The crime hypothesis on which the magistrates are working is unlawful influence on the assembly. In the investigation, which has been entrusted to the deputy prosecutor Alberto Sergi and head of the prosecutor Angela Barbaglio, there are also two other suspects. The insurance group itself gave the news in a note released on Saturday evening: “The company reiterates the absolute correctness and regularity of the shareholders' meeting operations object of the investigation (meetings of 13/4/2019, 27/6/2020 and 31/07/2020) the last two of which occurred, inter alia, with the intervention of an independent designated representative, such as Computershare Spa , and therefore through IT-only collection and voting mechanisms and without the involvement of the company and its structures; hence the impossibility for these to intervene or influence the vote expressed by the shareholders”.
“The company – continues the note -, which has given immediate and full cooperation with the investigative authoritya, reiterates its absolute confidence in a prompt clarification of the position, and also its confidence in the rapid activity of the judicial authority. In any case, the company would like to clarify that the resolutions passed in the shareholders' meeting of 31 July 2020 are valid to all effects and that the important transaction with Generali will continue as planned".
