Market manipulation and possibly obstruction of supervision. These are theoretically the two hypotheses of crimes for which the Milan prosecutor's office has opened an investigation, delegating the special currency police unit of the Guardia di Finanza to investigate the agreements reached between the Japanese giant Hitachi e Finmeccanica, preliminary to the public purchase offer of the Japanese group on 40% of Ansaldo Sts, prelude to the subsequent mandatory takeover bid on the entire share capital of the subsidiary in Piazza Montegrappa.
The investigation is currently still against unknown persons and therefore without suspects. The decision of assistant prosecutor Francesco Greco coordinator of the first economic crimes department of the Milan public prosecutor's office, arrived the day after the pronouncement of the Control Commission for companies and the Stock Exchange, which allegedly identified the existence of a collusion between Hitachi and Finmeccanica in the process of selling 40% of Ansaldo Sts, underestimating the price of the latter to the advantage of the other subsidiary Ansaldo Breda, a company in financial difficulties and sold at the same time to the one specialized in signaling for railways.
The task of the magistrates of the pool led by Greco and of the financiers will therefore be that of ascertain that the sale price of Ansaldo Sts has not been disclosed to the market in a distorted manner and "down" in order to favor the simultaneous sale of the associated company Ansaldo Breda, thus damaging the minority shareholders of Ansaldo Sts (who would have received a lower figure than the appropriate one) and above all ascertaining the correctness of the parameters with which the Board of Directors of Ansaldo Sts accepted the price of the Japanese offer, setting it at 9,50 euros.
Also in consideration of the fact that Consob, again yesterday, changed the price of the tender offer upwards, bringing it to 9,899 and extending the offer, expiring tomorrow, until 19 February. The decision of the commission led by Giuseppe Vegas came two months after the contextual complaints that two investment funds Amber Capital and Bluebell Partners (which requested that the price of the takeover bid be set at a significantly higher level: 15 euros) had filed both with the magistrates and with Consob.
