The project is not new. Over twenty years ago, the then Minister of Industry, Giuseppe Guarino, unsuccessfully proposed it, and more recently the former premier and secretary of the Democratic Party, Matteo Renzi, spoke about it in his book "Avanti". Naturally the details make the difference, but now the Minister of Economy (Mef), Pier Carlo Padoan wants to move on to the facts and has put various investment banks and law firms to work to develop a real plan that brings together in a superholding all the main public shareholdings, listed and unlisted, from the State Railways to Anas, from the Italian Post Office to Eni and Enel and above all to those collected in CDP.
The objective of the superholding to be set up is twofold: to speed up privatizations and to allocate the relative proceeds to cut the public debt sharply. The basic idea is to put 35-40% of the superholding on the market at once, but not through a listing on the stock exchange but through an investment by large funds, foundations, pension funds and high-ranking financial operators.
Crucial to the project being studied by the Treasury will be the role of Cassa depositi e prestiti (Cdp), not surprisingly chaired by an expert investment banker like Claudio Costamagna: as "Il Sole 24 Ore" writes today "Cdp and its assets would in fact one of the pivots around which the new plan would revolve”, even if the modalities and times are yet to be defined.
The central point still to be clarified is whether to directly confer the Treasury's stake in the CDP (which is equal to 82,77% of the capital, while the rest is in the hands of the banking foundations) directly to the superholding or whether to transfer the assets of the same to the superholding Cdp which would become a major shareholder of the new financial vehicle. Let's not forget that the Bank has 25,7% of Eni, 35% of the Post Office, a little less than 30% of Terna and a little more than 30% of Snam rete gas, as well as Cdp Reti, Fintecna, Sace and Fincantieri.
On the other hand, it would be more complicated to transfer the public real estate assets to the superholding, which belongs not only to the State but in many cases to local authorities.
