Fondiaria Sai drops 5% to 1,075 euros after hitting an intraday low of 1,037. And it weighs down the mood of a price list already dragged down by the pessimism of Berlin on Friday's European summit. If all the financial stocks have veered into negative territory and also Generali have lost around 2%, however, the insurance group is weighed down by more specific factors today. Starting from the exit from the Ftse Mib basket which will be effective from Monday 19 December and which depends on the periodic review of the indices. Fonsai will be replaced in the basket that collects the blue chips of Piazza Affari by Salvatore Ferragamo, who today rises by 1,95%.
Then there is the expectation for the complex operation to strengthen the assets which passes through the outcome of today's meeting between the top management of the group and Isvap. The plan prepared by Fondiaria Sai envisages, alongside the transfers and the release of goodwill, the creation of a vehicle in which to merge the strategic equity investments in RCS, Mediobanca, Pirelli, Unicredit and MPS. Credit Suisse would then enter 40% of the vehicle company. But the go-ahead from the Authority for this operation is far from obvious: according to rumors, Isvap would not like Fondiaria Sai to keep control of the vehicle even if it raises cash. The emergence of a new shareholder with a 12,5% stake in Premafin, the listed holding company of the Ligresti family, a shareholder of Fondiaria Sai with 35,7%, does not help to clarify. We are talking about Giancarlo De Filippo, a 73-year-old professional from the Principality of Monaco, who has always been linked to Ligresti and trustee of the Heritage Trust of the Bahamas, a trust fund which owns the investment in Fondiaria Sai. “Engineer Ligresti and his children are not the beneficiaries of the trust and I categorically exclude that there is any connection between the beneficiaries of the trust and the Ligresti family – De Filippo defended himself today in the press-. I have known the engineer Ligresti for more than 20 years but, both for reasons of confidentiality linked to my mandate as trustee and to avoid understandable embarrassments for him, I have never revealed the existence of the trust to him. Until Monday's communication, neither the engineer nor his children were aware of the existence of the trust”.
But the node on the vehicle company also depends on the fact that it is not said that this solution, which provides for the transfer of only 40% to Credit Suisse, is sufficient to bring the solvency coefficients back to safe levels. And also for this reason the Authority's opinion could be negative. In this case, Fondiaria Sai will have to draw up an alternative plan for capital strengthening and the market fears that a new capital increase may appear on the horizon, in the order of 500 million. The board will meet to discuss alternative solutions on December 12 in an extraordinary board meeting.
