The mother of all assemblies has already broken a record: bookings for the Telecom shareholders meeting on Friday have already exceeded 53,8%. It is easy to predict that 60 percent will be exceeded in the next few days. It is an indirect confirmation not only of the historic importance of the vote, but also of its uncertainty, which pushes the protagonists to move with great caution. In the midst of continuous surprises.
The last, in chronological order, concerns the decision of the president of Rcs Mediagroup Angelo Provasoli to give up his candidacy on the Telecom board "due to supervening professional and institutional commitments": the Bocconi professor, already designated to take the place of Elio Catania, has evidently decided that there is no need to slip into another mess. Also for this reason, we will still have to wait a few days to find out the moves of Telco, the holding that has so far expressed the majority of the board. the holding company, upon Consob request, made it known that he had convened a board of directors for December 19 to decide on the vote to be expressed at the Telecom assembly and on the possible list of names for the integration of the board. For the moment, the company has not put forward any indications for the replacement of the two lapsed directors (Catania and the former president Franco Bernabé).
In short, Telco does not discover its game. Assuming that the game is only one. Because, at this point, multiple teams are converging on the battlefield, it is unknown to what extent independent or connected to each other. Let's try to make a brief overview of the protagonists and extras of the most exciting meeting of the year which will have to respond to the request raised by Marco Fossati's Findim: the Telecom board must be removed. Or not?
a) The balance between duelists could be Blackrock. The US asset management giant takes sides with a stake which, after a thousand checks and confusions, amounts to 9,997% of the capital. A thread below the fateful threshold of 10%, beyond which one of the clauses of the contract between Telefonica and the other Telco shareholders (Generali, Intesa and Mediobanca) would have been cancelled. The pact, in fact, provides that the obligation not to buy other securities would be forfeited if a third party shareholder bought more than 10%.
That alone is enough to credit Blackrock as member of Telefonica? Consob president Giuseppe Vegas he suspects it. The axis between the Spanish group, a buyer on the market, and the US company could displace the other shareholders, leaving Telco and the others with the match in hand. But this thesis has a limit: Cade, ie the Brazilian antitrust, has already decided that Telecom, if it ends up in Telefonica's orbit, will have to sell Tim Brasil. Why should the Spanish group have concocted such a diabolical plan to fall on such a declared obstacle? Sure, Telefonica (and BlackRock) could act on behalf of third parties, to prepare a "package" to be passed on to At&t, Carlos Slim or who knows who else. But we are really on the brink of fantasy.
It is not at all said, then, that BlackRock, violating the practice that distinguishes its behavior, decides to vote alongside the current Board against the indications of the proxy fighters, aligned in favor of Findim. The feeling is that the US group has slipped into the game in the belief that Telecom could be a good deal, given the low quotation and the prospects opened up by the stew of international holdings.
BlackRock, the largest shareholder in companies such as Apple, Google, Exxon or General Electric, is certainly not embarrassed by the prospect of being a major shareholder in a telecommunications company that will still have to find a husband.
b) Nor is it easy to understand how compact the Telco front is after the surprise resignations of Cesar Alierta and Julio Linares from the Telecom board. It could be a tactical move, depending on the dispute that is looming with the Brazilian authorities. It may be the effect of the protests at home by the shareholders of Telefonica itself, BBVA in the lead, who do not approve of the Italian campaign at all. It can be, as we have seen, a war move. Or an action agreed with the other Telco partners. Of course, the consequences of the match will be felt among the members even in case of victory in the war against Findim and allies.
c) Marco Fossati has already played the joker : in case of victory of his motion, the top team of the new Telecom will in all probability be led by Vito Gamberale, one of the historical names of the last great Telecom season. Gamberale, one of Tim's fathers, made no secret of his opinions even in Parliament: rather than investing billions to run to the rescue of Telecom by buying a share of its network, public partners should return to Telecom with a percentage, between 15 and 20%, equal to the shares that the French and German "cousins" of Cdp hold in the former incumbents in Paris across the Rhine. Among the new names is a representative of Asati, the association of small shares to which Bernabé himself has conferred the shares in its possession.
d) Naturally, the shareholders' meeting is only a piece of a tangled puzzle in which Parliament (called into question by the law on the takeover bid), Consob (which so far has expressed itself through interviews rather than formal deeds), national authorities such as Agcom, in open controversy with outgoing EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes on unbundling tariffs. Therefore no one should be under the illusion that the yellow solution will mature on Friday, at the end of a meeting marathon that could last until nightfall. Against the backdrop, in fact, there is a picture of European telecommunications companies in a serious profitability crisis, looking for models capable of revitalizing profits and justifying the massive investments in ultra-broadband networks which are now essential for a country's competitiveness. Italy, already a leader before the robust injections of courageous captains in the recent past, today has a dramatic need to fill the gap. And it takes much more than an assembly.
