The race to bring Acciaierie d’Italia back to the market is underway and a clearing up for the related industries. Green light for outstanding credits. If for the former Ilva, after the one in 1995 that saw the Emilio Riva group as protagonist and the one in 2017 that marked the arrival of the multinational ArcelorMittal, this is the third privatization and the developments at the moment are uncertain, the related industries of Taranto, on the other hand, can begin to say that this time things went better for the credits accrued before AdI slipped into extraordinary administration in February. While they are still stuck in the long procedure underway at the Court of Milan and who knows if and how they will be paid, those before 2015, when the first extraordinary administration of Ilva began in January, two years after the exit of the Rivas and the State commissionership.
Past and present
In 2015, the Taranto supply chain lost 150 million. This time, 120 were at stake – jobs that the Mittal-Morselli management did not pay for – and companies have long feared that they would suffer the same fate. Instead, in these hours, suppliers are receiving communications regarding the transfers. Quotidiano had already anticipated it on September 19, saying that payments would start on the 20th.
It should be clarified that not all the credits are paid and not paid in full. Only those that the commissioners of Acciaierie, Fiori, Quaranta and Tabarelli, and the delegated judge of the Court of Milan, Laura De Simone, have recognized as deductible based on the decree of last January that became law in March are paid.
To the procedure
Prededuction is an advance payment that is granted to the creditor who possesses certain characteristics. Furthermore, the credit is not paid in full because there has been a transaction between Acciaierie and predeductible companies in recent months that has set the payment levels of the accrued amount at 70 and 80 percent respectively, with the supplier renouncing the remaining part. In particular, the proposal sent in recent days by Acciaierie to the companies, and which they had to sign, provides that “80 percent of the capital be paid on condition that the supplier presents to Acciaierie d’Italia – no later than September 16, 2024 – a factoring agreement pro soluto already signed”. Or “70 percent of the capital in the event that the supplier does not present to Acciaierie d’Italia – no later than September 16, 2024 – an agreement already signed. They will not be accepted by Acciaierie d’Italia pro soluto factoring after September 16, 2024”. Pro soluto means that the creditor transfers his credit to third parties and is no longer responsible for it, starting from the solvency of the debtor. Furthermore, it was specified that “in the event that the supplier does not stipulate pro soluto factoring, the installments will be paid by Acciaierie d’Italia as part of the extraordinary administration procedure”.
Now the mechanism that has been set in motion sees the public company Sace pay 80 percent of the credit – from which the processing fees are then deducted – in a single solution to then receive reimbursement from Acciaierie in 20 installments, of equal amounts, starting from September 27. Sace, out of 124 companies involved, has managed the majority of the positions, about ninety, drawing on a ceiling of 120 million. The companies were also required to be bankable. Those, however, who did not present the pro-soluto contract by last Monday, are paid 70 percent by Acciaierie but in 20 installments. There remains a tail of nine companies that, having bankability problems, have remained out for the moment. But there is a possibility that they will be recovered with other financial intermediaries and in the meantime the commissioners have already moved the deadline from September 16 to September 30 to allow the documentation to be perfected. The extension will probably also be used by those who did not have time to register by the 16th deadline.
The meetings
On the payment of credits, the related industries and the business associations (starting with Confindustria Taranto with Salvatore Toma and Aigi with the former president Fabio Greco) have developed in recent months a continuous, insistent pressure, which has affected the minister Adolfo Urso, the Ministry of Enterprises, Sace, the Puglia Region and the parliamentarians as they feared the same consequences as in 2015. A second collapse. Many meetings dedicated to the topic, many steps also aimed at improving the procedures, and in the end the solution was found. It must be said however that on the one hand the Government immediately tried to save the related industries with an ad hoc intervention and on the other the commissioners themselves worked to ensure that the new extraordinary administration did not become clogged with pending issues as in 2015. Proof of this is that the employees of AdI did not need to be included in the passive state for their entitlements. Now there is one last part to be closed: the making available for the credits of the induced sector a portion of the administrative surplus of the Puglia Region, something for which the latter confirmed a few days ago that it was working.