Yet another frantic day around Atlantia and to sale of its stake in Cdp, Blackstone and Macquarie of her stake in Autostrade per l’Italia. As is well known, in fact, the holding which is more than 30% owned by the Benetton family stops 88% of the shares of Aspi and in recent days it has received the final offer (or so it has been said) from the consortium of the three companies for a total 9.3 billion euros.
But this morning the declarations of the English fund Tci have it again shuffled the cards. From the columns of CorSera, the partner Jonathan Amouyal asked that to be sold is not the entire stake of Aspi held by Atlantia, ma only that attributable to Benettons, or 30.25%.
Why such a proposal? Easy, because Autostrade per l’Italia remains a goose that lays golden eggs and Tci, which has an option to get up to 10% of Atlantia, does not want to give up its stake in Aspi which guarantees secure income at least until 2035, when the concessions expire.
But now a problem arises. In recent months there was talk of one spin-off of Aspi da Atlantia with the consequent possibility of creating dedicated capital increases or other forms to guarantee the entry of Cdp and the other two shareholders. A proposal that the end of March the assembly had rejected after Sintonia, the Crt Foundation and the Sovereign Fund of Singapore (Gic) they had decided to grant exclusive rights to the consortium until 31 July.
But be careful: during the assembly, as can be read from the minutes, it was 72.38% of the share capital attributable to 1,181 shareholders is present. The proposal to reject the spin-off and to maintain the exclusivity with Cdp and the others was approved by 51.79% of the present capital, against the 48.06 who expressed himself in favor. A very narrow margin that leaves several questions.
The next May 31 will have to be there an assembly that promises to be fiery. That could be the right place to discuss the proposal launched by Tci which can be summarized as: let’s sacrifice the Benettons and keep our stake which yields good money. Otherwise, the British argue, all Atlantia shareholders will find themselves victims of a political measure that should instead focus only on the Treviso family.
(He follows…)