The suggestion of one lasted for the space of a morning climbing di Dolphin, the family's financial holding company Del Vecchio, to the treasury of Generali who made the Lion's titles fly in yesterday MY BAG. In a few hours three facts have swept away all illusions even if a doubt remains. The facts are two clarifications by Delfin, which on Friday was authorized by theIvass to rise more than 10% and up to 20% in Generali, and the bill of what it would take to attempt a takeover.
Generali: the three reasons that make Delfin's takeover vanish
Given the turn that the situation was taking and the inferences about a hypothetical takeover of the Lion of Trieste, Francesco Milleri, the CEO of Delfin, not much loved by some of the heirs of the Del Vecchio family and grappling with the complex succession problems opened up by Leonardo's death, hastened to clarify two things: 1) Delfin's request to Ivass to over 10% of Generali is only the technical effect of an “involuntary” exceeding of the 10% threshold due to the repurchase of treasury shares of the Leone; 2) on the future of Generali Delfin has no particular strategy. So: speech closed on climbing suggestions? Most likely yes, even if a doubt remains: why did Milleri ask for and obtain authorization to join Generali when it would have been enough for him to sell a small block of shares to return below the 10% threshold? The hypothesis circulating is that of a move by Delfin's CEO aimed at affirming his leadership in a market that has not yet taken the exact measures and is waiting to get to know him better. But there is a third point that cuts the bull's head: i Costs of a possible takeover of Generali that the Del Vecchio family doesn't really seem willing to take on considering that buying another 10% of Leone's shares would mean paying out the beauty of 2,8 billion euros.
Mediobanca: will the centre-right change the rules by reopening games in Piazzetta Cuccia?
But if the suggestion of a takeover of Generali can be considered as having already faded, this does not mean that Italian finance is not on the eve of a hot summer and that the new political season dominated by the centre-right does not hold regulatory surprises, especially on the Mediobanca side, but not only. The increasingly frequent propensity to resort to Golden Power in the face of real or presumed attacks on the security of Italian strategic assets it is not a signal to be underestimated but, on the contrary, the expression of a desire to embalm Italian capitalism even at the cost of alienating foreign investors. But, to go back to the jewels of Italian finance, no one has missed the new attack which, in a parliamentary hearing in recent days, the Roman entrepreneur Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone, who still has a bitter taste for last year's resounding defeat in Generali, has launched the legitimacy of the list of the outgoing board of directors and the securities lending, which Mediobanca appealed to in the Leone meeting. If the positions of Caltagirone, which seem to find attentive ears in the ranks of the centre-right, were implemented by the Melons and by the parliamentary majority that supports his Government, the games in Mediobanca in view of the October meeting would reopen immediately and the CEO Albert Nagel and he could not present the list of the board of directors to reapply for the leadership of Piazzetta Cuccia. fiction finance? Surely yes if Mario Draghi were still at Palazzo Chigi, but the tide has changed and today no one could swear that the rules of finance are not destined to change in favor of the large shareholders, who in Mediobanca are working undercover to put together 40% about the capital, and against the autonomy of the management. It would be a signal against the market and a return to the Middle Ages of finance destined to make the Italian stock market ever smaller. But times are what they are.
