2021 is definitely not a lucky year for Urban Cairo, the president of RCS and editor of Corriere della Sera. In football, his Turin has disappointed all expectations and fights desperately to escape relegation to Serie B which would result in significant economic and image damage, but the biggest tile has arrived in the last few hours and it is the defeat suffered in the arbitration against the American fund Blackstone on the sale of the headquarters of the Corriere della Sera in the very central Via Solferino in Milan carried out in 2013 by the previous ownership of Rcs, the company that publishes the Corrierone.
Cairo has always maintained that the price of the sale of the headquarters to the Blackstone fund (120 million euros) was not fair and, despite the different opinion of other shareholders, has sued the powerful American fund. But, after various legal proceedings and an initial award on the validity of the sales contract, yesterday the definitive one arbitration award he proved Cairo wrong. The price is right and Cairo cannot claim any compensation, ruled the majority of the Arbitration Board chaired by Renato Rordorf.
"It is not possible to recognize - says the Arbitration Tribunal - nothing in Blackstone's behavior that appears indisputably contrary to the duties of correctness and good faith" and therefore Cairo's requests for compensation "cannot be accepted". The clash between Cairo and Blackstone, which it has been going on for three years, was also a white-hot challenge among the leading lawyers: in fact Cairo was defended by the Bonelli studio, heir while the Blackstone fund was assisted by the Gatti, Pavesi, Bianchi, Ludovici studio.
The verdict is heavy but the battle over the Corriere headquarters is not said to be over. In fact, Americans are thinking of the civil case before the Supreme Court of New York to which Blackstone had turned in the first instance and which had suspended the judgment pending the Italian arbitration. Blackstone had asked 300 million in compensation to Rcs and another 300 in Cairo. We'll see now how it ends.
