The last leg of the patriarch dates back to the autumn of 2010. On an October day, while the CEO of Mediobanca Alberto Nagel talks with analysts after the budget meeting, Don Salvatore Ligresti meets in Piazzetta Cuccia with Vincent Bolloré, the strong partner of the French consortium, allied with Cesare Geronzi, the new president of Generali. "They asked us for room number seven, without telling us anything", Nagel himself would reveal two years later, in the midst of the Fonsai conflict which cost him a notice of guarantee. But Ligresti is careful not to reveal the merits of the discussion to the bank's top management: the plan envisages that Bollorè rake in Premafin shares, the leader of the Ligresti group, until they rise to the threshold of 1,1 euro and then leave room for Jean Azema, the number one of Groupama is also a director of Mediobanca, who will thus become a shareholder of the Ligrestis guaranteeing the money for the Fonsaila capital increase, removing the group from the grip of creditors. Starting with Mediobanca itself. But the audacious plan failed. The reasons? There were now too many stretch marks in the patient web that the engineer from Paternò had woven for decades: Enrico Cuccia was no longer in Mediobanca, nor was Cesare Geronzi; in Unicredit, the other major creditor, the last word on the Fonsai dossier belonged to Fabrizio Palenzona, determined to protect the iron axis with Mediobanca; on the political front, the matter was in the hands of Giulio Tremonti, well determined to sprout the wings of both Ligresti and Geronzi, or rather the two most sensitive antennas of Silvio Berlusconi in finance in the North.
And so began the inexorable decline of Salvatore Ligresti, the man who for decades kept in his portfolio the access keys to the most exclusive club of financial power (i.e. strategic stakes in Mediobanca, RCS, Pirelli, Generali and more) and who for years he has been able to act as a bridge between politics and business under the banner of business. It is no coincidence that it was he, in 1986, the year of his debut in Piazza Affari at the helm of Grassetto, who organized, with great discretion, the first meeting between Cuccia and the then Prime Minister Bettino Craxi. A power that, since the autumn of 2010 under house arrest this morning, has fallen apart, pick after pick so much so that today the Milanese stock exchange can almost ignore the effects of an arrest that less than ten years ago would have shaken half the list from its foundations. The same happens in real estate, the activity most loved by the engineer from Paternò, who repeated to everyone that he had started by building a "surface" in an apartment. Today the cranes of Citilife, sold to Generali and Allianz, nor those at work in the city's major projects do not stop: Manfredi Catella, CEO of Catella Hines, who also spoke words of filial affection for Ligresti, has by now replaced the Ligresti in the role of engine (a bit flooded to tell the truth) of the real estate development of the metropolis.
He didn't give up without a fight, the old lion. The dramatic epilogue has something farcical even among the telematic enclosures of Piazza Affari which expelled Fonsai from the basket of blue chips. First, Mediobanca's injunction to proceed with a robust capital increase of Fondiaria, so robust that it could not be tackled by Ligresti. Then the injunctions from Consob and Isvap, previously so distracted, now very vigilant and attentive. Finally, the epitaph-dismissal via Corriere della Sera on whose board of directors still sits his beloved daughter Jonella. The publication of a letter to the engineer of Vincenzo Maranghi, the banker who had delivered Fondiaria to the Sicilian builder. "I am convinced that you will be aware that the management of the second largest Italian insurance group can no longer have a family approach but postulates a change of pace". Alas, that "change of pace" did not take place. And that letter, well known to Alberto Nagel and Renato Pagliaro, Maranghi's heirs, today assumes the value of posthumous dismissal.
Yet a year ago it seemed that the engineer from Paternò had once again found a "white knight": Vincent Bolloré, the vice president of Generali who had identified Jean Azéma, number one of the Groupama insurance group, as the ideal support for Fonsai. But the deal, in the end, was not due to the takeover bid imposed by Consob on Giuseppe Vegas (a good friend of the then Minister Giulio Tremonti). Ligresti, however, managed to replace Groupama with Unicredit, protagonist of a costly but useless rescue attempt. It was the swan song for Ligresti, the master of relationship capitalism who within a few months lost the real point of reference of the system: Cesare Geronzi, defenestrated from the top of the Lion also thanks to the industrious silence of Giulio Tremonti. Meanwhile, the most precious ally on the other bank also jumped: Alessandro Profumo, the banker of reference that Ligresti himself, until a few months ago a director of Unicredit, had defended to the bitter end. Suddenly, therefore, Ligresti was discovered alone, moreover at the worst moment for those who own debts and bricks in industrial quantities.
A chain of misfortunes, therefore, aggravated by careless family management. Just what Maranghi feared, already "betrayed" to Geronzi's advantage. In fact, Fonsai's accounts are in full emergency: 952 million deficit in 2011 alone, including the discovery of a 660 million "hole" in the technical reserves to guarantee policyholders. Not to mention the write-downs of the equity and bond portfolio (350 million in all) or the write-down of goodwill (120 million) or properties (another 165 million). A real massacre that jeopardized the solvency index, which measures the ability of a company to meet the payment of claims and commitments towards policyholders. In the Fonsai house, in recent years, the rule of five has been applied: that is five million each salary for the three children of Don Salvatore, Jonella, Giulia and Paolo but also for CEO Fausto Marchionni, who came out in 2010 with the suffering group. Nobody found anything to complain about, starting with the boards of auditors or the auditors, carefully chosen by the engineer or his friends (see Francesco Micheli in Premafin). And what about the experts who considered the price at which the family sold the Atahotels hotels to the company fair? Six months after the "deal" (25 million pocketed by the Ligresti) a write-down of 17 million was necessary plus another of 30 million the following year, when Atahotels recorded a loss of 52 million out of 110 in turnover.
A gallery of absent-minded people, among which Isvap stands out which, after ten years of silence, carried out the first inspection on Fonsai in October 2010. The only truly innocent one is Toulon, the thoroughbred from Jonella's stable, bought in 2008 thanks to a leasing from Unicredit: 6,1 million for four purebred foals which, for the modest sum of 1,4 million a year, were sponsored by Fondiaria. And yet ISVAP has now asked for "clarifications" about him, a thoroughbred horse in the midst of so many broaches.
Attachments: Fonsai, the entire Ligresti family arrested
