The offer of the American fund Kkr for the purchase of the Tim group risks re-proposing a scenario that has already happened. The arrival of a new reference shareholder and with it a new course accompanied by industrial plans and strategic choices which, despite commitment and self-denial, will be disregarded, that is a replica of the events that have taken place over the last twenty-five years. Vito Gamberale, one of the historic managers of Telecom Italia in the nineties and following the top of Autostrade and founder of F2i, has never made any secret of considering the company one of the most desecrated large Italian companies. A consideration that, in these hours, seems to fit once more the troubled path of the former Telecom Italia and current Tim. In no European country is there an industry or a strategic sector that has experienced the vicissitudes and corporate strangeness of the Telecom group. The verb profane sounds appropriate because it refers to the image of those who enter the temple by being unsuitable or entering in unsuitable ways. In short, the error to be avoided is the repetition of a history of alternations that from the hard nut, with Fiat as a skeptical shareholder, to the courageous captains of Colaninno, to the passage of the Spaniards of Telefonica, returns a varied panorama often without a structure equity and managerial capable of giving a long-term strategic direction. The only exception, as a valuable team, was the one led by Tronchetti Provera, although it too ran into errors.
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The government
In this scenario outlined by Gamberale there is a guest of stone: the Italian governments, which in the course of more than two decades have never exercised a proper role of observer and, if necessary, of censor of the Telecom dossier. So much so that the recent Autostrade affair and the decision to nationalize the company that owns the concessions on the road network again pushes the former CEO of Telecom and Autostrade to suggest the direction. Tragedies should not be needed to make decisions about large Italian companies, traumatic events must not happen as happened in Autostrade to decide to deal with them. All the more so in the light of a privatization which, in the case of Telecom, showed its side right from the start. The original sin that Telecom was privatized in an anomalous way compared, for example, to Eni and Enel. The latter have been successful operations, with the State in a minority position, guaranteeing continuity in the internal management and in the top management that have alternated over time. In the case of Telecom – Gamberale recalls – a mechanism was triggered to expel the so-called “boyars”, but the truth was that by doing so, the way was opened for the real executioners who arrived later and who literally ripped it apart. A process of eliminating a generation of executives, technicians and engineers who deprived the company of skills, impoverishing it. Telecom, if you like, was the forerunner of the one is worth one, dear to the first-rate 5 Star Movement, I mean that the incompetent were worth as much as the competent, so the latter were sent away and replaced by people who had no competence. Gamberale, therefore, does not make a mystery of the judgment on the top managers who have taken turns leading the group, with a warning: I think that today, in the face of the news of the last few hours, we need to understand well what is happening and it is worth remembering that at the helm of Tim there is a manager (Luigi Gubitosi, ed) with his own personal history, who has always shown that he knows how to do a good job. The point remains the role that the Draghi government intends to adopt, in spite of the no comments received by the Ministry of Economic Development over the next few days. There is no advanced and industrial country that has the incumbent in the hands of a fund, the finding that leads straight to one of the possible scenarios: State intervention through Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, especially considering the value of Tim’s share. plummeted to historic lows. A share costs about 0.35 euro cents, I take the liberty of observing that it would be about 700 lire, that is the value of the Sip shares (from which Telecom derives, ed) in 1991, before the great revolution started by the Pascale era.
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