MILAN (ITALPRESS) – Luigi Lovaglio launched the challenge glove, turning Rocca Salimbeni into the heart of a financial trench that aims to rewrite the map of Italian credit. After seven hours of confrontation in the Board of Directors, where minorities manifested themselves with four strategic abstentions, the managing director of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena took the freeway with nine votes in favor.
On the plate there is a monumental plan of 70 billion euros to stop the advance of the OPAS from 30,5 billion euros launched by Intesa Sanpaolo. Lovaglio’s response is a horse move: launch two distinct Exchange Public Offers (Ops) entirely in Mps shares on Banco Bpm and Banca Generali. The target? Getting to the third national banking pole by exceeding the capitalization of the individual prey.
The geopolitical design of Lovaglio aims to discard the assets by attracting members of weight to Siena. By paying the acquisition by Sienese paper, the French of Crédit Agricole and the same General Insurances would become the maximum weights in the capital of the new financial giant. But finance is often a mirror game. If the offer on the subsidiary of the wealth management of the Leone Trieste travels with an additional cash parachute, the real battle ground moves to Piazza Meda. The one on Banco Bpm is an unagreed Ops, therefore hostile. A file that burns, especially because in June Crédit Agricole, strong of its 29.3% in Banco Bpm, had already landed the road to a friendly understanding. Now Lovaglio attempts to circumvent the Oltralpe obstacle by promising industrial compensations that, however, leave great doubts on the estate of the alliance.
To make the path similar to a walk on the glasses there are the rules of the game and the headlights of the judiciary. Mps is a fully-scaled bank, narrow in the grip of the passivity rule. It means that Lovaglio has his hands tied: he can’t go active defenses without the stamp of the extraordinary assembly. For this reason the banker has already set the date of the judgment to 29 October, when they will serve the two-thirds of the votes of the present capital to give the green disk to the increase of ad hoc capital. Lovaglio knows that in order to win this game he will have to awaken the strong identity of the small shareholders of Siena, who jealously guard 15% of the capital.
To engulose them and convince them to refuse the cash and shares of Carlo Messina, Lovaglio extracted the share dividend card: an extraordinary distributed super coupon detaching a package of 4% (about 3 billion euros) of 13.2% that Mps holds in the Generals. If the plan passes, Rocca Salimbeni will remain shareholder of the Lion with 9%, sitting behind the Delfin dei Del Vecchio. The market observes the chessboard with the suspended breath and the reactions of the traders did not wait, moving in order scattered along the tabellone of Piazza Affari Banca Monte dei Paschi of Siena closed the session in negative territory to 11,724 euros (-0,34%), weighted by the uncertainty on the colossal increase of capital that will have to finance the double operation.
Banco Bpm has reacted decisively to the hostile Ops sirens, archiving exchanges up to 16.75 euros (+0.66%) with a capitalization close to 25.4 billion. Banca Generali took the scene of the day, running at 68.20 euros (+1.26%) driven by the hypothesis of the cash component promised by Siena to supplement the equity exchange. Intesa Sanpaolo remains solid to watch the show, moving in modest rise to 6,815 euros (+0.41%), strong of its 30,5 billion original offer.
The real sword of Damocle on the fate of Lovaglio is not only made of numbers and concambi. To dramatically complicate the stage is the lighthouse lit by the Procura di Milano on the managing director. Judicial indiscretions weigh as lead on financial diplomacy and risk distracting the helmsman just as the decisive battle in the assembly opens. The industrial bet is gigantic, but the markets know that between the passivity rule, the French vetoes and corridors of the Palace of Justice, the road to 70 billion is a very narrow path.
– Photo Ipa Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
