Who hits (and why) on Nexi
Controversy over the sale of the Sardinian telecommunications company, Numera, to Nexi.
The sale of Numera , a Sardinian company operating in the ICT sector, to Nexi arouses harsh criticism. On the barricades are the credit unions, which already in recent months – after the announcement of the operation – had expressed strong perplexity . The territorial and provincial secretariats of Sassari di Fabi, First Cisl, Fisac Cgil, Uilca and Unisin have intervened again in recent days following the resignation of the president of Numera Spa, Antonio Capitta, who had voted against.
WHAT IS NUMBERS
Numera Sistemi e Informatica Spa, a company that operates in the Information and Communication Technology sector, is based in Sassari and is wholly controlled by Banco di Sardegna. A historic local company, Numera specializes in merchant acquiring, POS management and support activities for the banking system.
Its main customer is Banco di Sardegna which has its administrative headquarters and general secretariat in Sassari and which in 1992, pursuant to the Amato Law, was transformed into a joint-stock company. In 2001, the acquisition of the majority stake in Banco di Sardegna, and indirectly of the various companies that form part of its group, by Banca Popolare dell'Emilia Romagna, of which it became a "sub-holding" was completed .
THE PARTNERSHIP OF BPER AND BANCO DI SARDEGNA WITH NEXI
On 1 June Bper announced that it had signed, together with Banco di Sardegna, an agreement for the establishment of a long-term strategic partnership with Nexi "to be achieved through the transfer of the respective business units involved in merchant acquiring activities and POS management”. As part of the agreement, Banco di Sardegna undertook to sell to Nexi the stake held in Numera Sistemi and Informatica SpA "after carve-out from Numera itself of the activities not related to POS management and assistance".
“The consideration for the Transaction – reads the note on the Bper website – is equal to 384 million euros (including a deferred component of up to 66 million euros, the payment of which is conditional on the achievement of certain economic and qualitative targets). During 2021, the business subject to the transfer generated a total volume of transactions of €13 billion through a network of more than 110,000 merchants and around 150,000 POS".
The partnership – whose closing was indicated in the second half of 2022 – "will make it possible to further enhance the strategic component of merchant acquiring with the skills present within the Bper Group, through a governance system for sharing the evolutionary path with Nexi of acquiring products and services for customers of the Bper Group. The activities relating to Numera's payment systems will also be enhanced, recognizing its strategic role as a center of excellence in the area in which it currently operates".
THE CRITICISM OF THE TRADE UNIONS
As already mentioned, in July the trade union organizations had already expressed their opposition to the operation, complaining of "another heavy blow to the economy and to the prospect of economic enhancement of the area" forced "to pay an industrial line that is increasingly less attentive to enhancing , professionalism and specificity matured and consolidated over time". Moreover, they noted, “the case is not isolated. First the well-known attempts to transfer Banco di Sardegna's work outside the island, avoided thanks to the great trade union mobilization of 2019, then the recent massive closure of Banco di Sardegna agencies, now the sale of Numera". For this reason they "forcedly asked that the Sardinia Foundation, the regional and local political authorities and the whole Sardinian trade union world" be set up "to safeguard the protection of work and workers".
Now Fabi, First, Fisac, Uilca and Unisin have returned to office just after Capitta's resignation. “Despite the oppositional position expressed by the now former president of Numera evidently arrives very late with respect not only to the official announcement of the operation but also to press releases from the sector's local trade unions, to articles in the press which took place last summer and even to the formal communications of the launch of official trade union procedures dated 30 September last, we believe that this fact is in any case the most faithful testimony of the concerns already expressed on several occasions by the entire territorial union environment of the sector” they declare in a joint note.
"In our opinion, the legal aspect of the transfer of the entire shareholding from Banco di Sardegna to Nexi Spa should not mislead. Thus it could seem like a simple change of ownership" they underline, pointing out that "in fact, what is instead it is the dismemberment of the company, that 'carve-out' declared by Bper Banca Spa itself, which in fact involves on the one hand a diaspora of workers who will be divided between a new Numera, Banco di Sardegna and Bper Banca itself and on the other the disintegration of a leading IT company in Sassari, flagship of the sector in Sardinia, with important connections at a national level”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/numera-nexi/ on Mon, 12 Dec 2022 06:25:51 +0000.