It was the year 1999 when Roberto Colaninno’s Olivetti with the financial support of Emilio Gnutti, Ettore Lonati and his companions launched an absolutely hostile takeover bid on Telecom Italia. The takeover bid was completed a few months later, under the pleased gaze of the then Prime Minister, Massimo D’Alema, who went so far as to describe the entrepreneurs as “courageous captains” who challenged the elite of finance.
Not so brave, given that it was largely a deal concluded with debt. Debt that the captains of the “Lider Maximo” paid to Telecom itself. A ballast that condemned the then telecommunications monopolist to years and years of “depression”. Resuscitation attempts are remembered galore. All useless. The first female, right-wing prime minister had to arrive to resolve the situation. Detractors will say that Giorgia Meloni, “advised” by the head of Cabinet Gaetano Caputi, gave the green light to the sale of the network, a piece of the country’s strategic infrastructure, to a fund. Real. But the one in 2024 was a systemic operation (in the new company the Mef remained with a 16% share, appoints the president and has a sort of right of veto for the most important decisions) and financially inevitable.
With around KKR 20 billion, Telecom has drastically reduced its debt (by around 14 billion), starting a new life. Far from the former main shareholder, the French of Vivendi who often clashed with the executive’s projects and in the end sold the share at a loss, and accompanied by Poste, which replaced Cdp in the shareholding structure by launching a takeover bid (purchase and exchange of shares) across all of Tim. The offer of around 10.8 billion euros aims to create a national champion of financial services and digitalisation. Moral of the story: the group’s industrial project makes sense again, the debt has gone from 21 to 7 billion, the latest balance sheet closed, after years of losses, with a profit (half a billion) and the stock has skyrocketed. The capitalization jumped from around 6 billion at the end of 2022 to more than 21, so the public share of 9.81% was valued at 1.5 billion.
In short, after 27 years of vicissitudes, under the direction of the Meloni government, Tim was reborn. Now, one can be more or less satisfied with the political results of the legislature, but having given new life to a champion of the national economy is of inestimable value. Also because recovery operations are not limited to telecommunications.
There is also credit. Or rather, MPS. The red bank ruined by years of mismanagement by the left. The oldest credit institution in the world sunk by another reckless operation: the acquisition of Antonveneta in 2007 for around 9 billion. It was supposed to be the beginning of the expansion to the North (Veneto, Lombardy), the springboard for Siena and instead it turned out to be a suicidal operation.
The directors of the deal, Giuseppe Mussari (who grew up politically in the orbit of the DS) and Antonio Vigni, offered more than 9 billion to Banco Santander which, a few months earlier, had acquired Antonveneta from the Dutch ABN Amro for 6.6 billion. Not only that. Because to finance the operation Monte launched a monstrous capital increase only to discover in the balance sheets of the much coveted Paduan prey a whole series of bad debts that have weighed down Siena’s accounts and strategies for the years to come.
The beginning of the end. In 2012 MPS declared losses exceeding 4 and a half billion: via Mussari and Vigni, in Fabrizio Viola (CEO) and Alessandro Profumo (President). Twenty years of suffering, state interventions and continuous budget holes to cover which have cost the state no less than a dozen billion.
So, when Meloni arrives, at the end of 2022, the Mef still has 64.23% of Siena, but the bank has no future. Within a few years the Tuscan institute was overturned. Part of the credit goes to the work of Luigi Lovaglio, the CEO who arrived when Mario Draghi was still at Palazzo Chigi and confirmed by Giancarlo Giorgetti (Meloni government). The manager continued in Siena the recovery work that he had successfully completed in Creval (Credito Valtellinese), with an escalation that starts from the return to profit in 2023 and continues with the reduction of impaired loans and the increase in funding, loans and dividends (distributed after 10 years of lean conditions for the
shareholders). Of course, the work and support of the Mef proved to be fundamental, as it sold a good part of its share in the meantime (going from 64 to 4.9%). But the point is that MPS has transformed from an ugly duckling that no one wanted into a hunter who manages to acquire Mediobanca and which today, as we write, is being fought over by Banco Bpm and Intesa which has launched a takeover bid for the Rocca Salimbeni institution.
In a nutshell: Siena is recovered and is a protagonist on the market, while the Treasury has collected 2.6 billion for the sale in tranches of the maxi-share. A treasure to which another 1.3 billion should be added for the remaining 4.9% which, if Intesa’s takeover bid is successful, will be converted into Ca’ de Sass shares. «In October 2022 the entire Monte capitalized 210 million, then of course there was a capital increase of 2.5 billion, but less than four years later the institute was worth more than 32 billion on the stock exchange» Marco Greco, CEO of Value Track Sim, explains to Panorama. “In recent years it is clear that a great deal of restoration work has been done.”
The story of Stm is different. It has less of an epic feel, but it has an industrial relevance that is in some ways greater than MPS and TIM. STMicroelectronics is one of the European leaders in semiconductors, with a strong specialization in analog chips (less on digital ones) which are used to make electric cars and smartphones work and are also essential for the IoT (Internet of Things) and renewable energy. The present, of course, but above all our future. So much so that it was difficult to understand why the company was struggling so much with continually shrinking revenues, cuts to orders and ever-shrinking margins.
At the beginning of 2026 the rebirth. The explosion of the data center and artificial intelligence business is fundamental, of course, but some issues have also been untied regarding governance. The chip giant is jointly controlled by Italy and France through an equal strategic stake (Mef and Bpifrance have 13.75% each) which Rome judges to be too oriented towards Paris. Guilty? The CEO Jean-Marc Chery who has been leading the group for 8 years now.
Last May, the Treasury’s pressure bore fruit. Former ambassador Armando Varricchio was chosen as the new president, balancing the transalpine “exuberance”. There’s no point in hiding it. If the results are there (the quarterly reported a turnover above 3 billion, up 23% on the previous year) the discontent fades away.
And especially if the stock on the stock exchange triples its value in the space of a few months, squabbling becomes more difficult. That’s it. «Over the years» explains Greco «the capitalization has gone from less than 30 billion to almost 62, so the 13.75% stake of the MEF has appreciated by 4.39 billion euros. The asset aggregate of the three shares (TIM, MPS and STM) shows an extraordinary creation of value in terms of the overall market cap which went (data updated in mid-June) from 36.06 to 115.85 billion euros (+221%). If we consider the packages in public hands, the revaluation was just under 10 billion euros.”
A nice little treasure. We should add the odyssey of Alitalia, or rather of Ita. The public caravan that for years has been the symbol of state waste. With the creation of a sinkhole worth fifteen billion. On the national carrier it is very risky to talk about profits given the downsizing, the capital increases and the birth of a new group much smaller than the previous one. The facts, however, say that with the sale to Lufthansa the Italian airline finally has a perspective. To ask for more one had to fly even higher into the heavens and turn to the Almighty. But that wasn’t the case.
