Will it be a public company? The Tim assembly on Friday 4 May probably won't go that far but could decree a first turning point in the group's governance: out of the French shareholder, in with the American raider. The games aren't done yet but this would already be half a revolution to change the rules of a game, following the privatization of telecommunications, which brought Telecom Italia to an all-time low and left Italy with an enormous delay in terms of infrastructure, speed of the Internet, on the country's digital literacy.
The Elliott Fund, as is known, raked in 9,9% of the telephone group ercalls for seats on the board of directors. He accuses Vivendi of thinking only of his interests and not those of all the shareholders, he would like to "enhance" the Telecom network (the precious last mile in copper), by selling it and merging it with Open Fiber. This would give birth to a "Terna" of the fiber network with the task of projecting Italy into the near future of a 100 Giga world.
Space for two competing operators – excluding a dozen more advanced cities – does not exist in Italy and the costs of a double network would be monstrous, as Franco Bassanini explained in unsuspecting times in a forward-looking and prescient interview at FIRSTonline. The "Terna" operation, according to the American fund, would free up sufficient resources to allow Tim to advance on core services and grow, distributing effective remuneration to its shareholders.
Vivendi, who attempted to disguise control over Tim with the fig leaf of "a management and coordination activity" later dismantled by Consob, in turn accuses the Elliott Fund of, which has often acted as a vulture fund around the world, to have a short-term, entirely financial vision, to aim for a substantial unpacking of the company which would impoverish it and alternatively propose a "societarization" of the network to be achieved over a longer period of time (no less than a year and a half), keeping the control of the new Netco to then sell a minority share. The French group owns 23,9% of Tim.
Getting the two rivals into dialogue is not easy and although this is the attempt of the managing director Amos Genish - who threatens to leave the group if his industrial plan is not supported by the winners, whoever they are - he risks leaving both unsatisfied others.
Between the two contenders, the tip of the balance could be the CDP with its approximately 5% to be put on the plate in the meeting also to facilitate the aggregation of the consensus of the Funds on the Elliott list.
It is true that the shock of the raiders, who enter with a minority stake and thus attempt to influence corporate decisions and governance, is not always successful. It is also true that the "proxy fights" are attacking a much more dynamic market in the USA than the Italian one. But sometimes they get some results: see the cases Nestle in Switzerland, Ansaldo in Italy e Lactalis still in Piazza Affari. And above all, we have to ask ourselves, which alternative has so far guaranteed the pompous system of debt takeovers which, from the "courageous captains" of the Colaninno era onwards, ended up blocking Telecom Italia, swamped it with debts, reduced the perimeter and pushed it to a defensive castle on the network which slowed down the country's digital evolution. In the age of industry 4.0 we have 7000 industrial areas where the ultra-fast connection is a mirage and who knows if and when it will arrive.
The siege of Tim has its reasons and the status quo has proven not to work. The arrival of the Elliott Fund is just a consequence of years of bad choices. The road was paved for him by Open Fiber and the choice of the Renzi government to shorten Italy's digital gap. Whatever it takes.
For those in doubt, just look around: Detsche Telekom through T-Mobile has just bought Sprint in the USA: a 26,5 billion dollar deal that aims to revolutionize the new wireless networks and advance 5G in one of the Most technologically advanced countries in the world. If Telecom Italia had hitched up that bandwagon, forming an alliance in the 90s with the German giant as proposed by the then CEO Franco Bernabè, today we would see another film.
