If twenty years ago Alessandro Profumo, then CEO of Unicredit, had sold the shareholding held in Enrico Cuccia's Mediobanca on the market, no one would have been spared the accusation of lese-majeste and a national drama would have arisen. But today Mediobanca, less and less investment bank and more and more consumer credit and asset management bank, it's not what it used to be. Long gone are the days when the Milanese institution was the clearinghouse of Italian capitalism and the crossroads of the entire financial system.
Today the sale on the market of an important stake in Mediobanca, such as that of 8,4% that Unicredit sold with a quick blitz two days ago, it is a telluric shock not without indirect systemic effects but it is not the earthquake it would have been twenty years ago. Mediobanca becomes more contestable but has long ceased to be a strategic asset of the system. What matters, however, is the fate of the its 13,4% stake in Generali, which still makes him the first shareholder of the insurance company: it is strategic, because Generali is not just a piece of Italian history, but a group that has a large share of the national public debt in its belly and a very fine raw material such as Italian savings.
After vainly promising to reduce his share in Leo, Mediobanca remains the first shareholder of the Trieste companybut to do what? It will depend on who will be the controlling shareholders of Piazzetta Cuccia and it will depend a lot on Leonardo DelVecchio, which it already is now the first shareholder of Mediobanca e among the most influential in Generali. Here it is not up to the State to intervene in defense of the Italian identity of the Leone but to its shareholders, in the hope that they will be more farsighted than they have been in recent years, when they have not granted the management of the Trieste company a capital increase that would have allowed it to grow and better defend themselves against possible assaults from other international insurance groups. Now it seems that Del Vecchio himself is hypothesizing a recapitalization of Generali and it is to be hoped that an extraordinary operation which will strengthen the assets of the Lion will take place before it is too late, because here the Italian nature of the insurance group deserves to be defended.
But, in addition to the future of Generali, the fate of another strategic asset for Italy is at stake in these hours, such as the Ilva of Taranto, the largest steel plant in Europe, which employs over 10 employees (20 with related industries) and alone is worth 1,4% of GDP. Here the management is already foreign, being – at least for now – in the hands of the French-Indian group of ArcelorMittal, which, faced with the economic difficulties of steel, a justicialist Apulian judiciary and the regulatory uncertainties determined by the irresponsibility of a Government ballasted by the Five Stars (which previously guaranteed the penal shield, then takes it away and then reconsiders), threatens to return the keys to the plant to the Italian State if they are not recognised at least 5 redundancies.
Ilva of Taranto is a heritage not only of the city and the Apulian region but of Italy, due to its ability to supply the entire national manufacturing system with steel, but ended up on the edge of the abyss because it is dangerously playing with fire. ArcelorMittal has very serious faults but the about-faces of Prime Minister Conte, the Five Stars and above all Luigi Di Maio on the penal shield - too timidly opposed by the Democratic Party - are unforgivable, because they take place on the skin of the workers and because they have offered the irresponsibility of the company an incredible alibi.
This is exactly where we need to start again. First of all it is necessary to restore the penal shield and then it is needed a negotiationlasts as long as necessary to induce ArcelorMittal to comply with contracts, without putting in place illusory shortcuts such as nationalization or the intervention of the CDP in Ilva. Demagoguery has already done too much damage in this story and it is not in this way that the Taranto steelworks can be saved and the lost credibility recovered in front of the whole world.
Will it finally be possible to find the key to the problem and avoid the collapse of the Italian steel industry? It is difficult to make predictions but there is no doubt that a large chunk of the country's future is really at stake on Ilva as on Generali, two Italian jewels to be jealously defended. Although many have not yet figured it out.
