The future of Borsa Italiana and Mts could be jeopardized by politics. It supports it il Financial Times according to which the decisions taken by politics "they threaten to complicate” the process of the possible sale of the two platforms by the London Stock Exchange Group.
Let's recap the picture. LSE needs to sell Borsa Italiana and Mts to get the green light from the European Antitrust at the$27 billion acquisition of Refinitiv, a financial services provider owned 55% by Blackstone and 45% by Thomson Reuters.
From the sale of Piazza Affari, bought 13 years ago, the English company could collect 3,3 billion euros. Last July, LSE announced exploratory negotiations on the possible divestment.
Mts, the Italian government bond trading platform that has become increasingly important also due to the increase in Italian public debt caused by the coronavirus pandemic, also entered the game. Last week, according to rumors Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and Euronext would have forwarded a non-binding joint offer to the LSE for the acquisition of Mts. In the coming days the same will also be done for Borsa Italiana.
And this is where the Italian government comes into play which, according to the Financial Times he would like the two companies to go to the CDP-Euronext consortium and would have "instructed" the Italian giant led by Fabrizio Palermo in order to prepare a joint offer with Euronext. The latter, it should be remembered, already controls the main European stock exchanges, including Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, and boasts a capitalization of 4.300 billion, eight times that of the Milan Stock Exchange.
However, the deal would be far from concluded given that Deutche Boerse would also be in the race that currently FWB Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse (Frankfurt Stock Exchange) – one of the largest stock markets in the world and the largest of the eight German ones -, but also the Eurex derivatives market (in joint venture with SWX, the Swiss stock exchange), and the Clearstream company. Six is also interested in the deal, the operator that manages the Zurich Stock Exchange and which recently took over the Madrid Stock Exchange. The deadline for submitting binding offers is Friday 11 September.
