Everyone agree? Probably not. Today the general manager of A2A, leader of the Italian shareholders in Edison, Renato Ravanelli, is playing a delicate away game with the financial director of Edf, Thomas Piquemal. Ravanelli, according to what he filters from A2A, starts with a very specific mandate: no to the proposal that arrived from Edf at the beginning of the week. If anything, we start again from pre March agreement, already reached with A2A then stopped by Giulio Tremonti who in vain tried to set up a local consortium involving Eni, Enel or who knows who. But Ravanelli will not be alone. Alongside him there will also be Andrea Viero, general manager of Iren, representing the other Delmi partners.
Piquemal, therefore, has good reasons to suspect that the French proposal was judged by Delmi's other shareholders much less "inadmissible" than the heads of the Lombard utility claim. Contrary to A2A, both Iren, i.e. the utility that brings together Turin, Genoa and Reggio Emilia (15% of Delmi) like Sel and Dolomiti Energia (10%) and the financial partners of the operation, i.e. Fondazione Crt, Mediobanca and Bpm (14% in all) do not despise the negotiation basis proposed by Edf.
The reason for this different opinion, which emerged during the Delmi board meeting, is easily understandable. From an industrial point of view, the March agreement, negotiated by EDF with only A2A (strong by 51%) provided for the sale of two large hydroelectric groups to A2A for the shares of the utilities. Now, on the contrary, the offer concerns the sale of 100% of Edens, the fourth group of renewables in Italy, which owns smaller plants scattered throughout the peninsula. In short, the stew is much easier and more convenient for minority shareholders.
A part of the Italian front, banks and minor utilities, likes the financial side of the offer. The French have proposed a three-year put on 100% of Delmi's stake in Edison (about 30% of the capital) at a price that will be calculated on the basis of Edison's margins multiplied by the average multiple of a utility group still to be specified. In the March agreements, the put was guaranteed only on 25% of the share held by the Italians, while on the remaining 75% EDF would have acquired the shares based on the market price with a request for exemption from the total takeover bid.
The banks like the fact that they can be settled in cash, but Iren itself is tempting. Meanwhile, time, as well as the incomparably greater financial firepower, play in favor of the French. EDF yesterday announced that it has reached an agreement to buy 20% of Edipower held by the Swiss utility Alpiq for an amount between 150 and 200 million, which implies a potential write-down of 50% of Edipower held by Edison in the order of 500 million. An eloquent way to warn Italian shareholders that there is no room for negotiating generous raises.
The mission of the two Italian ambassadors, therefore, will hardly end with a definitive agreement. Thus the hypothesis of an extension makes its way, also because in any case there is no material time to draw up such a complex contract within the four days missing from the deadline set by the agreements. In Brescia, meanwhile, the supervisory board of A2A meets today to address the complex skein.
Lastly, Edf responded to Consob's requests for information regarding the request for exemption from the takeover bid. “In order to guarantee transparency to the market – reads the press release – EDF has decided to provide relevant information to the market”. “There is no guarantee – it is specified – that such an exemption will be available” but Edf, in the event of an agreement with Delmi, undertakes “to inform the market of the conditions on the basis of which the exemption will be requested”.
