Profumo and Leonardo: rumors, denials and controversies
What happens to Leonardo and to the company manager Alessandro Profumo? Facts and indiscretions (Bono di Fincantieri lurking?)
“The day of the third quarter accounts arrives, but not the day of the resignation at the top. The CEO Alessandro Profumo goes on, despite the rumors about the candidates for succession, the vitriolic letters from Bluebell and the discontent of part of the government ”.
This is what the journalist Angela Zoppo of the newspaper Mf / Milano Finanza wrote today.
Yesterday, rumors rebounded on Dagospia that today the head of Leonardo's company, Profumo, could resign to the board of directors of the aerospace and defense group.
Indiscretions corroborated by requests for resignation that would have come – as Dagospia wrote yesterday – from the Minister of Defense, Lorenzo Guerini (Pd).
A move – according to the reconstruction of Start Magazine – that never took place.
Furthermore – highlights an insider – it would be the public shareholder of the former Finmeccanica, that is the department of Economy headed by Roberto Gualtieri (Pd) and the general manager Alessandro Rivera, to ask for the resignation of Leonardo's head of the company, in the wake of the conviction issued a few days ago for an MPS affair when Profumo was president of the bank.
But no input has come from the Treasury, according to government rumors. Indeed, the deputy minister of the Mef, Antonio Misiani (Pd), explicitly said in recent days that Profumo must not resign.
This does not mean that even in the Democratic Party there is a debate on whether and how to give indications on the issue.
In parliamentary circles it is also noted that in recent days – in place of thedeceased Peppino Caldarola, former director of the Unit – Antonio Funiciello, communicator and essayist, former chief of staff of the Prime Minister, arrived at the direction of the corporate magazine La Civiltà delle Macchine Paolo Gentiloni between 2016 and 2018.
As well as – compared to a first declaration of the 5 Star Movement and a declaration of the pentastellated deputies of the Finance Committee (moreover beaten by the president of Copasir, Raffaele Volpi, a leading exponent of the League) – the grillini are less compact than one might think compared to a Profumo: Dimaiano Carmine America, a member of Leonardo's board of directors, voted in favor of the status quo for the summit recently approved by the board of directors of the former Finmeccanica.
It is also known in Milanese financial circles that the undersecretary to the presidency of the Council, the pentastellato Riccardo Fraccaro, has fruitful relations with Leonardo's top management and therefore with Profumo.
According to political rumors, alongside the political fibrillations the project pursued for some time by Giuseppe Bono, Fincantieri's deus ex machina, to give impetus to his idea of a national champion in the sector resulting from the merger between Leonardo and Fincantieri, also to cushion the repercussions on the business of the shipbuilding group controlled with 71% by Cdp Industria (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti group).
Rumors or unlikely scenarios aside, the fact remains – as underlined in a rough article by Avionews relaunched by Dagospia – that "the stock on the stock market, since he has been at the helm of the company, that is, has slowly collapsed since 2017, passing from 15.9 euros to the current 4.7 euros ".
Anomaly?
Il Sole 24 Ore asked yesterday: “What do Italian blue chips such as Eni, Telecom, Leonardo and Saipem have in common? They are among the worst since the beginning of the year with reductions ranging from -61% for Saipem to -44% for Telecom Italia. Another point in common is that a week ago they adjusted, and in some cases updated to the downside, the lows of last March in the midst of the first pandemic chaos. Third point: there is also the State in the capital: with a 43% stake for Saipem, 30% for Leonardo and Eni and around 10% for Telecom. But the game of analogies does not end there: since the beginning of the year their prices have been doing much worse than their European competitors. Suffice it to say that Saipem's -61% and Eni's -53% compare with a 40% decline in the European oil sector (Stoxx 600 index). Or that Leonardo's -57% should be compared to -8% of European industrialists and that -44% of Telecom is more than double compared to the TLCs of the Old Continent (-21%) ”.
Why are these large Italian groups under such pressure on the stock market?
"I have noticed in several sessions a persistence of investors against these securities even in the absence of particularly negative news – explained Davide Biocchi, trader Directa sim -. Despite the rebound achieved in the last two to three days, the charts of these stocks continue to be technically bad to see. While in the long term the prices touched from a value investing perspective could be interesting, in the short term the relentlessness against such securities could continue, also because it cannot be excluded that in part it is due to a downward pressure exerted by some funds that through these securities it hedges itself from the country risk by not being able to do so, as it happened in the past, with BTp and banks. Today protected by the ECB shield ».
For this reason, not surprisingly, Copasir has turned on a beacon on Leonardo.
(article being updated)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/profumo-leonardo-rumors/ on Thu, 05 Nov 2020 14:53:37 +0000.