For the Benettons, siding with Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone's list in the match between Generali and CEO Philippe Donnet and Mediobanca cannot really be said to have been a great idea: they lost a lot of money and lost the battle for the conquest of the first insurance company and they have never, ever managed to open a dialogue between the two fronts as promised Alessandro Benetton, the new president of Edizioni, the holding company that brings together all the main shareholdings of the Venetian family.
To show up at the last assembly of Generali as a weight shareholder, exactly the third single shareholder after Caltagirone and Leonardo Del Vecchio and naturally behind Mediobanca, which del Leone is the first shareholder, the Benettons - through the subsidiary Schematrentatre - have purchased a new package of 12,5 million Generali shares, equal to 0,79% of the capital. With this operation i Benetton, who already held 3,97% of the Lion rose to 4,76%.
The battle in Generali with Caltagirone cost the Benettons a virtual game of 60 million
Unfortunately for them, the move proved to be completely useless on a general level because the Caltagirone list came out clearly defeated by the assembly, dominated by the outgoing board of directors list headed by Donnet and supported by Mediobanca. But above all, the operation proved to be very expensive because, at last Thursday's Stock Exchange prices, the Benetton share package recorded – as Mf pointed out – a theoretical loss of over 60 million. A real drain, wrote the financial newspaper, which is costing the Venetian family dearly and which tarnishes the image of chairman Alessandro Benetton, who in recent months had conducted a series of interesting operations – from the takeover bid Atlantia upon conclusion of the sale of vacuum until the wedding in Rest and Dufry – but who evidently does not turn out to be the Midas King that some of his singers described.
