Open Fiber, what happens between Mef, Cdp, Enel and Macquarie

18 September 20204 years ago babelfish

The offer of the Macquarie fund for Enel's stake in Open Fiber, the forcing of the Treasury on Enel to pass shares of Open Fiber to Cdp to facilitate the project of the single company of the AccessCo network. Facts, names, numbers and indiscretions

Major maneuvers between private companies, public groups, government and foreign funds on the single network company.

In these hours it is in particular the shareholding of Open Fiber (OF), the company for the construction of the optical fiber network set up in 2016 by Cdp and Enel on input from the Renzi government, that is at the center of the discussions, in view of the confluence of Open Fiber in the AccessCo project.

The Treasury is forcing Enel to transfer some shares of OF held by Enel to Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (controlled by the Ministry of Economy and invested in by the banking foundations) to facilitate the confluence of the fiber optic network of Open Fiber in the company unique in the network designed by Tim, government and CDP.

In this way, Open Fiber's stake would be of Cdp, while the Australian fund Macquarie is about to join the shareholder structure of OF.

In fact, Macquarie's proposal for Open Fiber reached Enel and today was at the center of the meeting of the board of directors of the group chaired by Michele Crisostomo and led by Francesco Starace.

The board of directors of Enel, according to a note from the group, was informed of the receipt of the binding offer sent yesterday by Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets (Mira) for the purchase of 50% of the share capital of Open Fiber owned by Enel.

This offer, according to a note from Enel, provides for the recognition of a consideration equal to approximately 2,650 million euros, net of debt, for the purchase of the aforementioned equity investment, with adjustment and earn-out mechanisms.

The offer has not yet been evaluated: “The times are necessary to deepen things like this, we are talking about whole weeks, a month ', Starace specified:“ They are quite long times, they are offers that must be examined. There is nothing urgent we do not have a calendar that runs after us. We will manage this in the necessary time ', added the Enel company head, specifying that if the offer is for the entire 50% of Open Fiber “we will have to say this when we have finished examining it. I can't tell him right now. Certainly 50% was the starting point ”.

The binding offer to take over the 50% that Enel holds in the network company, of which it is a shareholder with another 50% Cdp, comes after the due diligence carried out by the Australian fund which had presented an expression of interest in June with which it valued the entire Open Fiber 7.7 billion euros.

In light of the single network project in which the government is working to unite Open Fiber with Fibercop , the Tim and Fastweb company in which Kkr enters (also valued at a total of 7.7 billion), the valuations may have been modified with a retouching of the 'upward.

The Minister of Economy, Roberto Gualtieri (Pd), in view of today's Enel board of directors, yesterday afternoon summoned the number one of the energy group to the Treasury Department (which is a direct shareholder of Enel with 23.59% ), Starace, and the managing director of Cdp, Fabrizio Palermo.

According to the wishes of the Ministry of Economy, the CDP – according to the reconstruction of Start Magazine – should acquire from Enel a further 5-10% of Open Fiber (now jointly controlled by Enel and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti) from Enel, thus rising around 60-65% and leaving Macquaire in a minority position: a scheme therefore similar to that found for FiberCop with the American fund Kkr.

With Enel outgoing and with a reasonable capital gain in its belly (it paid out 7-800 million for the launch of Open Fiber and could collect 2.5-3 billion for its 50%) – wrote Repubblica – "the convergence between the two entities could proceed more expeditiously, passing to the evaluations of the other pieces of network to be made also on the basis of the parameters provided by the Kkr and Macquarie funds ”.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/open-fiber-che-cosa-succede-tra-mef-enel-cdp-macquarie/ on Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:50:59 +0000.