Double fail forTakeover bid by Ei Towers (Mediaset subsidiary) on Rai Way. The first no was pronounced by the RAI board of directors and the second is coming from the Antitrust.
"The public purchase and exchange offer promoted by Ei Towers on Rai Way and conditional on the attainment of a stake equal to at least 66,67% of the company's capital must be considered unproceedable", writes the Board of Directors of Rai which owns the 65,07%, in consideration of the fact that the Government has reaffirmed its will to maintain control of 51% of Rai Way itself.
Mediaset and Silvio Berlusconi who controls it will have to come to terms with it. But, in addition to Rai's sharp no, there is another rejection hanging over the head of the takeover bid and it is the one already overshadowed by the Antitrust, which, after concluding the preliminary examination of the takeover bid, notes that, if in port as it has been envisaged, the operation would lead to "a concentration capable of constituting a dominant position of a new entity such as to eliminate or reduce competition in a substantial and lasting way".
As always happens in cases where the operation is in progress, theAntitrust does not completely close the door to the takeover bid on Rai Way but lets the parties know that, as it stands, it cannot be authorised. Consequently, the Antitrust will give Mediaset and its subsidiary Ei ToWers ten days to advance the counter arguments and modify the offer before issuing the final verdict.
But, at this point, after the pronouncement first by the Government and then by the Rai Board of Directors, it will be necessary to see in the next few hours what Ei Towers now intends to do: whether to insist or definitively give up on an operation with a high degree of difficulty.
