As soon as he returns from Brazil at the end of the week, the president of Telecom Italia Franco Bernabe will prepare to select the advisors who will have to estimate the value of the network infrastructure, in view of the spin off which will lead, perhaps by the end of the year or the beginning of 2013, to approve the establishment of a new entity 51% controlled by Telecom and for the remainder by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti.
As reported today by Il Messaggero, Telecom would have sent an invitation letter to a dozen financial institutions, including Intesa Sanpaolo, Mediobanca, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Jp Morgan, Credit Suisse, Bank of America-Merril Lynch.
The deadline for accepting the invitation has been set at 9.00 on Monday 15 October. The Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, on the other hand, will be assisted by Deutsche Bank.
Reaching an agreement, however, will not be easy. According to Telecom, the value of the network amounts to around 15 billion euros, while the Cassa's preliminary assessment would stop at 9 billion.
Even if the gap were to narrow, the sale of the network would not be sufficient to drastically reduce Telecom's liabilities, equal to approximately 30 billion in 2011, but it would reduce them quite a bit.
The spin-off, therefore, as summarized by Bernabè, should be seen more from the point of view of an "industrial project, not a financial one, because any amount collected would not solve the debt problem".
