Generali, who are the fans of the Caltagirone list
All the men of Caltagirone in the war on Assicurazioni Generali against Mediobanca and Donnet. Facts, names and curiosities. Francis Walsingham's article
For months the battle of Trieste, the one that agitates the “Northern Galaxy” and that sees the board of Generali, supported by Mediobanca, oppose the challenger Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone, supported by Leonardo Del Vecchio, has filled the pages of the newspapers.
A clash that the challenger Roman builder brought into all the buildings of the capital by calling into question the Consob first, then inspiring the presentation of the D'Alfonso bill which aimed to hinder the presentation of lists by the outgoing boards and finally by deploying the Banking Commission with its combative president Carla Ruocco (M5s) in the role of the inquisitor against Philippe Donnet, summoned to report on the dismissal of Luciano Cirinà (hearing later postponed to after the assembly of 29 due to the controversies raised, made public by the resignation by the commission of Luigi Marattin, of Italia Viva).
In short, the Sicilian-born builder tried to lower the center of gravity of the dispute from Trieste to Rome also because in London the investors were very cold (as shown by the reports of the proxy advisors who unanimously rejected the Caltagirone plan) and, as its presidential candidate Claudio Costamagna told Reuters , they even misunderstood their intentions on M&A. It is normal that we understand each other better in Rome, where Caltagirone has had a dense network of relationships for years also managed – but perhaps less than in the past – by Fabio Corsico .
To understand something more of this network, however, it is useful to turn our gaze to Abruzzo, homeland and kingdom of another entrepreneur active in construction and publishing: Carlo Toto (now struggling with a government problem connected to his dealership motorway). A passion that led them to work together on more than one occasion, such as when in 2007 they were awarded the restyling works of one of the most controversial motorway sections in Italy: that of the variant of the Apennine pass between Barberino del Mugello and Sasso-Marconi on the Bologna-Florence route.
But the passion for cement and newspapers is not the only thing that unites Caltagirone with Toto. The deputy Pd Luciano D'Alfonso , author of the bill presented in the Senate last November and aimed at obstructing the presentation of lists for the renewal of the board of directors by the expiring board, is in fact a big shot of the Abruzzo Pd but above all he has very strong ties. close with Carlo Toto.
Ties that in the past also cost him some legal headaches such as when in 2008 the Pescara prosecutor ordered house arrest for the then mayor D'Alfonso (profession: Anas official ) by targeting a series of favors (dinners, travel, flights planes) that Carlo Toto would have paid to D'Alfonso in exchange for the award of contracts and favors. Accusations from which it is necessary to remember that D'Alfonso was acquitted . But the deep ties with Toto remain. Having landed in the Senate, D'Alfonso in Rome has close relationships with Carla Ruocco, a combative exponent of the M5S and president of the banking commission. It is a fact that the two share the determination to carry forward, each in their own offices, the claims of the rebel Caltagirone in what he himself, with a not very happy timing, defined a war of independence during a fluvial interview with the Sole 24 Ore .
The parliamentary commission of inquiry on the banking and financial system chaired by Ruocco has in fact summoned the CEO of Generali, Donnet, with a request for a written report to be presented before the hearing initially scheduled for 5 April, to explain the critical issues of some management dynamics. A real 'report' on past activity and future objectives, which led to the controversial resignation of the deputy from Italia viva Luigi Marattin, president of the Finance Commission, for whom the summons of Philippe Donnet "exceeded all limits" with a intervention of a commission "which heavily enters a corporate governance game from which politics should, in my opinion, stay out". Following the controversy, the hearing will be postponed to after the meeting, without this being able to affect the outcome of the meeting.
Abruzzo returns to the fore in the battle over Trieste also in relation to another character linked to D'Alfonso and convincedly aligned with Caltagirone in his battle in Generali against Mediobanca and Donnet. It is April 1 (but this is no joke) when Elio Lannutti, a deputy born in Chieti elected in Lazio in the M5s list now in the Misto-Italia dei Valori group, presents a parliamentary question abundantly taken up by the Caltagirone newspapers in which he thunders : "Consob did not move on Generali, while it had and still has the duty to verify more in depth some anomalies that I found in my question". A question in which the deputy will bother with quotations from Ernesto Rossi and a lot of rhetoric to point the finger at Mediobanca's misdeeds, an authentic obsession of Caltagirone.
That's enough? Not exactly. Because the D'Alfonso family has entered politics and institutions in their DNA. D'Alfonso is close friends with the brother of the director general of the Treasury Alessandro Rivera ( also from Abruzzo ) and the Mef in this game has been brought up more than once. In particular, the silence with which the Mef, which is responsible for supervising banking foundations, is following the acrobatics of CRT caused a sensation. Acrobatics that see the Turin foundation deployed in the unprecedented role of activist alongside the rebel Caltagirone in his war on Trieste. An alignment that has forced the president Giovanni Quaglia to a large number of interviews in the newspapers in recent days (but without revealing a correspondence that certifies the anti Mediobanca and pro Caltagirone position).
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/assicurazioni-generali-caltagirone-mediobanca-donnet/ on Wed, 20 Apr 2022 06:06:47 +0000.