Piazza Affari retreats (-0,3%) after the robust rebound on Tuesday. Even the other European lists imitate the prudence of the Asian stock exchanges which, having digested the good news on the front of the Greek crisis, have turned their attention to the weak American economy. And so Paris, London and Frankfurt are back, albeit only by 0,1%.
MPS, THE FOUNDATION DROP JUST ABOVE 50%
However, the sharp slowdown of Mps stands out on the Milan price list, down by 5,4%. The Mps Foundation has announced that it has sold, through a placement organized by Goldman Sachs, a package of 450 million preferred shares (until now all the privileged shares were in the hands of the Foundation) for 0,8325 euros. The sale of the preferred shares determines the automatic conversion of the shares into ordinary shares, as stated in article 4 of the Articles of Association: "the sale of the preferred shares is communicated to the company without delay by the selling shareholder and determines the automatic conversion at par of the shares preference in ordinary shares".
Thanks to this transaction, the stake held by the Sienese Foundation drops from 55% to just above the 50% threshold, with two results: a) reducing the outlay for the controlling shareholder on the occasion of the capital increase of 2- 2,4 billion; b) the increase in the ordinary capital of Banca MPS, with advantages compared to the Basel 3 parameters which do not consider the privileges in calculating the capital.
As regards the rest of the list, in addition to the decreases, lower than 1% of the main banking stocks, it should be noted the descent, for the second day in a row, by Mediaset (-1,9%), penalized by a report by Bernstein on the possible “political” dangers for the group but also on the consequences of a possible confirmation of the sentence on the Mondadori award. The verdict is expected by the end of June. Finmeccanica, Psymian and Fiat Industria also retreat.
NOKIA EFFECT ON STM
At the recent investor day in New York, Carlo Bozzotti revealed that Nokia was no longer the number one customer of the Italian-French semiconductor jv. Indeed, after the withdrawal from the Symbian system of the Finnish group and the adoption of Windows technology, which requires time to be installed on Nokia devices, Stm takes for granted a drop in supplies for the group, a circumstance already foreseen in the guidance for 2011. But the Nokia effect (still down by 2,3% in Helsinki after -13% yesterday) weighs on the share price of Stm (-1,4%).
Among the news of the day, the Natixis report on Saipem (+1,3%) should be mentioned: confirmation of the "buy" and target price rising from 44 to 49 euros. Saipem, also promoted by Liberum Capital (target at 43 euros) also benefits from the increase in oil prices to 103 dollars.
Diasorin also made a big splash (+1% to 33,88 euros) after the publication of a Mediobanca report (outperform from 38 to 40 euros) in which it is anticipated that the group will enter the molecular diagnostics sector in 2012.
