Borsa Italiana: Italian Franco-Germanic consortium? It will belong to everyone, therefore not Italian

A new chapter in the long history of the Italian stock exchange and its sale, with the government bond market, by FTSE. Let's retrace the previous steps:

• FTSE decides to get rid of Borsa Italiana and MTS, to buy the refinitiv platform, something concrete, which manages the information;
• Cassa Depositi e Prestiti decides to intervene because "The Stock Exchange must become Italian again"; even if, in itself, the stock market is something that can be created or recreated whenever you want. In the US there are several, belonging to different companies. The important thing is the basic legislation (a task of the state, yes), and the will to develop a direct capital market;
• Then comes Euronext, that is the Paris Stock Exchange, but not only, and proposes to CPD to participate in the operation. In exchange, a minimum 8% stake in Euronext in CDP is sold. In short, from control of the Italian stock exchange to participation in the parent company of Borsa Italiana, but with a non-controlling and management percentage entrusted to the goodness of the French and Dutch shareholders.

Now another page is added, as Milano Finanza shows us, with Deutsche Borsa wishing to join the consortium for the purchase. However, there are doubts because Deutsche Borsa, the Frankfurt stock exchange, is too large to enter the operation without excessively reducing the shares of the other parties.

In the end, as can be guessed, it is only an empty power game: if Borsa Italiana belongs to everyone, in the end it belongs to no one, and the game of the “Borsa in Italian hands”. already insignificant, it completely loses sense. If someone else is in control, what is the point of putting money into it, except as a high-yielding investment. And this should make us think.

There are two cases: o Borsa Italiana and MTS are very profitable, and then we should ask ourselves if the semi-monopoly regime in which they operate is not excessively favorable, or if they do not have a higher return than similar investments. In the first case, then, the interest of the State is in the reduction of the income, with a legislative modification that favors the creation of other markets for the exchange of capital, perhaps more modern and transparent, but always based on clear rules and on CONSOB control.

Furthermore, and we really want to encourage the direct collection of capital, there are different ways to intervene, with bureaucratic simplifications and tax incentives. But it is necessary to have a national economic policy, to know what the role of the financial markets is in the management of savings. All questions that the government does not seem to be able to answer.

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The article Borsa Italiana: Italian Franco-Germanic consortium? It will belong to everyone, therefore not Italian, it comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/borsa-italiana-cordata-franco-germanico-italiana-sara-di-tutti-quindi-non-italiana/ on Mon, 31 Aug 2020 10:25:35 +0000.