"I think Elliott will have to quickly convene a Telecom Italia meeting to appoint the auditors." A spokesman for Vivendi from the Paris headquarters told Radiocor the following day the appointment of Luigi Gubitosi to the new CEO of the Telecom group.
The appointment of the auditors, blocked by vetoes between Elliott and Vivendi in the Telecom Italia shareholders' meeting held on April 19, should take place well in advance of the expiry of the previous assignment. Telecom Italia would already be behind best practices, given that the mandate of the current auditor, Price Waterhouse, ends with the approval of the 2018 financial statements. However, there is no legal obligation on the subject, as the Tim group recalled in a note dated November 13.
In addition, 30 days' notice is required to convene a new meeting. Therefore, if we wanted to fix it within the year as Vivendi requests, the times would be very tight. The Vivendi spokesman also adds that "shareholders will have to decide between Elliott's plan to stew the company and a medium-term industrial plan that was voted on by 98% during the meeting on May 4th".
At the moment, Vivendi does not seem willing to personally ask for the convening of a meeting. Given that it has the numbers to do so, the French company, moreover, could integrate the agenda of the meeting which will be convened for the appointment of the auditors. Alternatively, fund managers who aggregate at least 5% of the capital could ask for the meeting.
OPEN FIBER, RIPA: 4,8 MILLION CONNECTED HOMES WITHIN THE YEAR
Meanwhile, discussions continue on the possibility of merging the Telecom network with that of Open Fiber to create a single national infrastructure. Open Fiber's number one did not want to comment on the hypothesis, but announced to the loop that the company expects "to close the year with 4,8 million connected real estate units: 4 million in market areas (cluster A and B) more than 800 units in the areas involved in the Infratel tenders (clusters C and D). To achieve all this, we have awarded contracts for around 1 billion euros through 48 tenders”.
ANTITRUST: EXTENSION OF USE RIGHTS FREQUENCIES 5G IS ANTI-COMPETITIVE
Finally, the Antitrust also has its say on the disputed extension, from 2023 to 2029, of the rights to use the frequencies of the 3,4-3,6 gigahertz band assigned to the pioneers of 5G, i.e. Go Internet, Linkem, Mandarin and Aria . In a report to the Ministry of Economic Development and to Agcom, the Antitrust recalls “the competitive criticalities associated with the spread of the practice of renewing the rights to use frequencies without carrying out new competitive procedures. This practice, in fact, as already underlined in the past, produces the effect of not allowing the unfolding of competition for the acquisition of a scarce resource and therefore prevents the competitive confrontation from leading to the entry of new operators or the emergence of more efficient operators”.
Recently, to secure the 5G frequencies auctioned by the government, operators bid 6,5 billion; in particular, Vodafone and Telecom will disburse 2,4 billion each. Hence the reports to the Antitrust and the appeals to the Tar against the extensions, and the possible subsequent trading for figures lower than those of the auction. Tiscali (which merged with Aria), for example, is in talks with Fastweb to sell the frequencies for less than 200 million euros.
