The Telecom-Blackrock mystery continues: the TLC group claims it has not received communications from Blackrock relating to the share increase, communicated by the fund to the SEC. The US fund, on its part, specifies that it holds a share equal to 7,783% of the shares with voting rights of Telecom Italia plus 0,006% of Adr for a total of 7,789%. In a note, the US fund indicates that it has not exceeded the relevant threshold of 10% as the remainder is linked to the convertee.
In short, the twists and turns in view of the Telecom assembly on 20 December follow one another. The new balance between small and large Telecom shareholders is BlackRock, behind which a 'third wheel' could be hidden in the dispute between Telco and small shareholders. The US fund, which in violation of Italian law has not communicated to Consob its doubling of its stake in Telecom from 5,13% to 10,14%, may have made new purchases, in theory up to 14,9% to avoid a new obligation to disclose to the market which starts at 15%, and has effectively paved the way for Telefonica to purchase shares directly on the market. Two indications which, however, are not sufficient to prove a hidden agreement with Telefonica, while it cannot be excluded that the fund may act on its own behalf or for a third party. In fact, it seems difficult to think – one thinks in financial circles – that the Spanish operator, which with the withdrawal of the chairman Cesar Alierta and the CEO Julio Linares from the Telecom board and the renunciation of appointing new directors has taken a step back to give a signal to the market and to the Brazilian Antitrust Cade, can now embark on an operation that has already created problems with Consob.
The Stock Exchange Authority, for its part, promptly reacted to the news of BlackRock's doubling and ordered both the US fund and Telecom to inform the market by 8 am on Monday morning, i.e. one hour before the whistle opening of Piazza Affari, revealing one's cards once and for all. In particular, BlackRock will have to say how many shares it owns, whether it intends to participate in the meeting on the 20th and how it intends to behave, also giving reasons for the "serious regulatory violation", which will cost it up to 500.000 euros in fines and which, in any case, in the absence of an amnesty disclosure to the market, entails the sterilization of voting rights for securities purchased secretly. The request made to Telecom, the taxpayer in the affair, instead concerns the degree of knowledge of the moves of the US fund. Consob wants to know whether or not it received information from BlackRock before, during or after the stock accumulation. In fact, the specter of "information manipulation" looms over all the subjects, which could trigger an investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office.
However, the Commission also turned to Telco, and therefore to its shareholders (Telefonica with 46,2% of the voting right but with an effective 66%, Generali, down to 19,32%, but with the at 30,6%, and Intesa and Mediobanca, both at 7,34%, but with 11,6% voting rights by virtue of the agreements signed with the Spaniards last September). In an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore, the president of the Commission Giuseppe Vegas wonders how sustainable is Telco's decision to present a minority list to the assembly, now made up only of the CEO. Marco Patuano and the independent Stefania Bariatti. For this he asked the Telco shareholders to "also bring out the names of the other candidates before they are made in the meeting". In fact, by statute, in the absence of a suitable number of directors, it is the chairman of the assembly himself who solicits the presentation of any candidates. From well-informed circles, however, there is an indication that the Telco Board of Directors meeting for 19 December, which has been scheduled for some time, will only indicate the replacement of the former president Franco Bernabè, who will almost certainly be Angelo Provasoli. Other names are not envisaged, because if the board were to lapse in the shareholders' meeting, Telco, which supports it, would automatically become a minority shareholder and therefore could not present other names than those already indicated.
