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Here’s how Palenzona quail to the presidency of the Crt Foundation

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Here's how Palenzona quail to the presidency of the Crt Foundation

Scossone at the top of the Cassa di Risparmio di Torino Foundation. Palenzona ousts Quaglia as president. What happened and what were the disagreements

Palenzona quail to the presidency of the Crt Foundation.

Fabrizio Palenzona is the new president of the Crt Foundation.

He was elected by the members of the institution's Steering Committee.

He got 10 out of 17 votes.

Palenzona takes over from Giovanni Quaglia, who has led the Crt Foundation since February 2017. Quaglia had reapplied for the position.

Alessandrino, 69 years old, Palenzona has held numerous positions both as a politician and as a banker. Among others he was president of the province of Alessandria and vice president of Unicredit. He is currently chairman of Prelios (where surprisingly, after years of harmony with the top management of Intesa Sanpaolo, Palenzona is encountering difficulties in relations with the Milanese banking group led by Carlo Messina, here the reconstruction of Start Magazine ).

The challenge for the presidency of the Crt Foundation comes at the end of a delicate phase for the Crt, which, given the escalation of internal conflict and divisions on various issues, starting right from the commitment for the Generali match. This despite the results (trumpeted by the Turin institution) of the foundation, which was able to capitalize, among other things, on a strong capital gain on Atlantia, net of the reinvested share after the takeover bid.

A key figure at the junctions between politics and finance, Palenzona has been out of the spotlight for a long time after leaving Unicredit. While continuing to play a role in important matches: from Atlantia-Autostrade to the role of "ambassador" on behalf of Intesa Sanpaolo at the time of the takeover bid on Ubi Banca; for this reason, the news in relations with the institute headed by Messina is causing a sensation.

But what were the disagreements between Palenzona and Quaglia.

Below is an archive article from Start Magazine, dated December 2021, which can help to understand the dynamics that led to the (not too surprising) election of Palenzona.

HERE IS THE ARTICLE IN THE START MAGAZINE OF DECEMBER 2021 WITH THE FIRST DISFIGHTS BETWEEN PALENZONA AND QUAIL AT THE TOP OF THE CRT FOUNDATION:

Tensions at the top of the Piedmontese Crt Foundation on the Assicurazioni Generali dossier.

After the Foundation's support for the pact formed by Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone and Leonardo Del Vecchio in an anti Mediobanca and anti Donnet key in Generali, the Piedmontese credit institution is mounting remarks, distinctions and questions that would lead – according to rumors gathered in financial circles Milanese – to Fabrizio Palenzona, formerly at the top of Unicredit and in the past deus ex machina of a certain world straddling politics, banking and finance.

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE CRT FOUNDATION

Unprecedented diversity of views given that the current number one of the Foundation, Giovanni Quaglia, was considered very close to Palenzona until recently. But evidently the institution's participation in the Caltagirone-Del Vecchio pact, in addition to lighting an informal beacon at the Treasury, has caused tensions between the two prominent Piedmontese exponents.

WHAT THE NEWSPAPER WROTE THE PRESS ON TWO FRONTS IN THE CRT FOUNDATION

“There is an internal branch but how much it weighs is difficult to say. Certainly in Crt the climate is not exactly the most serene – the Turin newspaper La Stampa wrote today at the end of an article on the pactists – The arguments of the "frondists" are many. Of ways and methods. In the meantime, the lack of collegiality weighs heavily on the decision to join the Pact. And then the profitability of the investment: the one in Generali since 2016 has yielded just under 100 million in dividends alone. Furthermore, the lack of involvement of other Foundations in the Pact was not appreciated, an involvement promised to the board of directors on 14 September which approved the adhesion to the Caltagirone-Del Vecchio consortium and which has not borne fruit so far. In favor of interventionism, only one argument remains: the hope of being able to have a seat on the next board of directors of the Lion in the event that the pactists prove successful. Topic put in black and white in the pact, in the passage in which reference is made to the "consultations" on the composition of the next board of directors".

SPLIT IN THE ADDRESS COUNCIL

The leaders of the two sides – who are found in particular in the Foundation's steering committee rather than in the board of directors – would be on the one hand Giampiero Leo and Pierluigi Poggiolini, who defend the work of Quaglia and Massimo Lapucci, powerful general secretary of the institution, and on the other – on positions closer to those of Palenzona – there would be Francesco Galietti.

THE NOTE FROM THE FOUNDATION

But will the Piedmontese foundation take pen and paper even after the article in La Stampa? In fact, the institution made itself known in this way after an article last Monday in the Business & Finance insert of the newspaper la Repubblica: "The Crt Foundation – reads a note from Crt dated 13 December – constantly operates in a linear and shared manner in the management of the shareholdings that make up its assets, and this obviously also applies to the shareholding in Assicurazioni Generali, on which the board of directors has always decided unanimously. Likewise, the Steering Committee, within its competence, has always shared the various, periodic and punctual information on the subject of asset and financial management which continues, however, to confirm excellent performance". According to the Foundation's press office, "the rumors collected by some press organs are surprising and not true, just as any consideration relating to the Foundation's governance rules has no basis".

Here is an excerpt from the article that prompted the note from the Crt Foundation:

Crt. Foundation a clear rift: on the one hand the board of directors of the Foundation, driven by the tandem made up of the president Giovanni Quaglia and the managing director Massimo Lapucci, who moved decisively towards a consultation pact with the two main private shareholders of the Leone, i.e. Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone and Leonardo Del Vecchio. On the other hand, the steering council of the Turin institution, which in recent weeks has seen some very active protagonists in the promotion of a new statute which decisively limits the range of action of the board of directors and in particular of the general secretary.

Behind the dispute it is also easy to glimpse the evergreen silhouette of Fabrizio Palenzona, former president of the same Foundation and still considered very influential on the choices of the Turin institution: precisely between Palenzona and Quaglia, who the former had helped to rise to the top of the Foundation, a rift would have taken place which also involves the Generali affair and which today fuels the Piedmontese disagreements. Last April, the Board of Directors of the Foundation was completed with some appointments and in the settlement session it decided to immediately reconfirm Lapucci for a new mandate, which would expire a year later. A guarantee for the general secretary, who has held the position since 2012, which however makes some of his and Quaglia's critics turn up their noses.

Last September 14, then, the top management of the Foundation explained to the board of directors that a few days earlier, on the 10th, Caltagirone and Del Vecchio signed their agreement to consult on Generali for "a more profitable and effective management" of the company, "based on technological modernization of the characteristic activity, to the strategic strengthening of the enterprise, as well as to its growth in an open, transparent, contestable market logic”.

On Quaglia's proposal, the board of directors of the Foundation (which owns 1.23% of Generali) decides, as stated in the draft minutes of that meeting, to "give a mandate to the president and the general secretary… to evaluate the possibility of joining and possibly sign the consultation agreement between shareholders, both with reference to Assicurazioni Generali and with reference to Uncredit”, the bank in which the entity has 1.64. The two were also given a mandate "to increase the investment in Assicurazioni Generali up to holding a maximum of 2% of the share capital". Said and done. Three days after that meeting, on 17 September, the Foundation's representatives signed the consultation pact and effectively sided the institution with the Caltagirone-Del Vecchio alliance, which no longer wants anything but the list for the new board of directors of the Leone is proposed by the same outgoing board of directors, or – argue the contesting shareholders – in fact by Mediobanca. In the following days, however, one of the two vice-presidents of the Crt Foundation, the Turin jurist Maurizio Irrera, published at least two articles in which he raised strong doubts on the appropriateness and effectiveness of lists presented by the boards.

All this activism does not go unnoticed in the Foundation's steering committee, where the fact that Lapucci has been on the board of Caltagirone Spa for some time (where he was reconfirmed immediately after the new mandate decided by the Turin body) and also sits on the board of directors of Banca Generali, obviously controlled by Trieste. In September, however, the Foundation's steering committee was not yet complete because complex negotiations were underway between Quaglia and the local authorities of the region to choose their representatives there. Not that the steering committee could have done anything on the choices relating to financial holdings, which are the exclusive competence of the board of directors, but the fact remains that some of the steering committees have experienced that of Quaglia and Lapucci as a real blitz.

We are now, when the Foundation is preparing to participate in the battle for power in Generali, perhaps in the meantime with 2%, and in Turin the steering council, now full of its 18 members, sees a heated internal debate.

Some councilors of the body – for example Giampiero Leo and Pierluigi Poggiolini – support Quaglia and Lapucci. Another group, which claims to represent a majority of at least 12 votes in the steering committee, instead wants to run for cover. The councilors of this group have studied the statutes of all the Piedmontese foundations and the main Italian ones and are preparing a draft that should be discussed at the beginning of 2021 by the steering council itself. Among the qualifying points is the prohibition for the secretary general to accumulate different positions – read positions on the board of directors – compared to the one he has in the body he belongs to.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/palenzona-quaglia-alla-presidenza-della-fondazione-crt/ on Tue, 18 Apr 2023 14:33:06 +0000.