It must have been a casual coincidence or a symbolic choice to present the new 2019-2021 business plan of Cassa depositi e prestiti (Cdp) right in the old headquarters of IRI in the very central Via Veneto in Rome? How many times have regrets about the past and suspicions about the future of this strange centaur, half public and half private, which is the Cassa, overlapped and yesterday's occasion was the good one to dispel the fog. The president took care of it Massimo Tononi to do so by replying, alongside CEO Fabrizio Palermo, to a clarification question on the location with these words: “I was very happy to return to this building because here 25 years ago I was the personal secretary of the then president of IRI (who was Romano Prodi, recalled to via Veneto by Prime Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Ed) but I didn't choose the venue and I don't even know who chose it. There is no throwback, because IRI was totally controlled by the state, while CDP is financed by the market” and 83% belongs to the Treasury and 16% to the banking foundations.
It was not the only comforting news that came out of the presentation of the plan CDP2021 from Italy for Italy which Tononi and Palermo did after the interventions of the Minister of the Economy, Giovanni Tria, and the president of ACRI, Giuseppe Guzzetti, who 15 years ago piloted the entry of the banking foundations into the capital of the Cassa. There were other happy news.
The first was the plan itself, that in three years it aims to mobilize 200 billion euros, of which 110 from own resources and 90 from private capital and from local, national and territorial institutions and which broadens the field of action from strategic shareholdings and infrastructures to businesses and the territory but which does not forget the cornerstones of the plan and raison d'être of the CDP itself: sustainability and profitability. In other words "the savings of Italians for the sustainable development of the country". Fifteen years after the turning point in 2003 which inaugurated a new historical phase for an institution that was born in 1850, the CDP - which is the first group present on the Stock Exchange - presents itself with a firepower of 420 billion in total assets, with a shareholders' equity of 35 billion, with receivables of 101 billion and with large strategic equity investments of 33 billion, including Eni, Terna, Italgas, Saipem, Poste Italiane, Open Fiber, Tim, Fincantieri, Ansaldo Energia and other companies distributed in seven sectors.
Palermo, who knows the Cassa like the back of his hand having been its Financial Director before becoming the new managing director, repeated in every possible way that the CDP wants to be a fundamental driver of the country's growth, but never forgetting that its resources come from postal savings and the market. This is why the first objective must be to make investments profitable of those who have trusted the Cassa and, secondly, that of selecting the investments themselves in the best possible way according to one Sustainable Development, both from an environmental and social point of view, and in compliance with the statute which prohibits the use of resources in loss-making companies. Because the CDP is not the IRI but least of all the Gepi e its job is not to bail out companies close to bankruptcy, even if sometimes politicians pretend to forget about it.
And this is where the second good news arrived with the highest alert on Tim and above all on Alitalia. On the role that the Cassa will play in the telecommunicationswhere it is present 50% of Open Fiber and with a strategic 5% in Tim, Tononi and Palermo have not revealed their cards while waiting for the Government to decide what to do on the network and on the single company but have made it clear that before using other resources in Tim they will think a thousand times. For now that is no growth plans in the leading Italian telephone company, which does not prevent the top management of Cdp from expressing their appreciation for the single network project. On Alitalia, also in the version with Ferrovie dello Stato, it is the Statute that prevents the CDP from intervening except perhaps as a financial partner.
In short, a good plan and commendable intentions, provided that the Cassa really resists the attempts at interference that the Lega-Cinque Stelle government manifests even more than its predecessors. But on this it will be only the facts that will decipher the present and the future of the CDP.
