Assicurazioni Generali, what CRT says (and what it doesn’t say) about support for Caltagirone
Controversy in the CRT foundation (shareholder of Generali) after the choice of top management to support the Caltagirone list. The correspondence between Generali's pro-list headhunters and the foundation chaired by Quaglia
Giovanni Quaglia,president of the CRT foundation, accompanied the choice to support the Caltagirone list to overturn the current Generali top with interviews released today in which he proudly claims the choice.
"The die is cast," Quaglia said in an interview with La Stampa . At the Generali meeting on 29 April, the Foundation, shareholder with a 1.7% stake, will vote for the discontinuity, announced the number one of the Turin foundation.
“The Board of Directors investigated and expressed itself in favor of the lines of the strategic plan presented by Luciano Cirinà and Claudio Costamagna. It is the end of a path of analysts, reflection and confrontation ”, added the president of the CRT.
What convinced you ?, asks La Stampa. Answer: '“First of all, the long-term strategic vision that sets very ambitious and sustainable organic growth objectives. The ' Awakening the lion ' plan designs systematic growth, through the search for opportunities linked to a series of important factors ".
Which?" “The important extraordinary finance operations through mergers and acquisitions with the aim of making the group grow in size by looking at other players on a European and global level. The desire to rationalize costs to create efficiency and the digitization plan envisaged for the group. All of which elements we have welcomed ”.
In addition, "there is a second aspect that allows governance" and a "third element" that is "the commitment envisaged for Italy and the territories", concluded Quaglia.
An unusual media noise that of Quaglia, usually shy and refractory to the media spotlight, but which hides some aspects.
First aspect: the resolution of the board of directors of the Turin savings bank took place by a majority (5 votes out of 7) and not by unanimity. The reason? According to rumors, everyone would not have appreciated the choice of auditing Claudio Costamagna and Luciano Cirinà (candidates for the top of the Leone da Caltagirone) without the counterpoint of Philippe Donnet, current number one of Generali.
Furthermore, the resolution of the board of directors was preceded by “neutralist” recommendations from Commission I of the same foundation, oriented in favor of abstention and not of Caltagirone.
Second aspect: yesterday members of Commission I asked the CRT summit if it is true that Russell Reynolds, the headhunter appointed by the board of Generali, has probed CRT for profiles to be included in the board list.
The answer? The top management of the foundation explained that in November 2021 Russell Reynolds had asked for information on the ideal profile of director and not instead solicited cv.
Mystery cleared up? Not at all, according to the reconstruction of Start Magazine : yesterday evening an email from Russell Reynolds was unveiled that in "last January" explicitly asked the top management of the foundation curricula to be included in the list of the Generali council ("candidates that can be evaluated and included in the Long List ")
But, having received no response, Nicola Gavazzi of Russell Reynolds on January 21 wrote to the top management of CRT: “Having not received any response, I deduce that you are not interested in making possible proposals to us”.
Some board members and directors, who became aware of the correspondence, were very resentful: neither President Quaglia nor Secretary General Lapucci have ever informed the CRT bodies of this letter, they remarked.
Had the leaders of the foundation already decided to support Caltagirone given that he did not submit alternatives to the directors of the foundation in view of the general assembly of Assicurazioni Generali?
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/generali-crt-caltagirone/ on Thu, 14 Apr 2022 07:10:29 +0000.