Skip the deal on Autostrade

Stefano Montesi – Corbis via Getty Images

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The letter reached the upper floors of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti in the early afternoon. With a precise indication. Atlantia, the company through which the Benettons control Autostrade, does not intend to retreat from schema resolved on Thursday by the board of directors to inaugurate the new season of the motorway company. He says no, therefore, to the request that arrived, again by letter, from the Cassa precisely in the hours when the board of directors was deliberating the new course. A request that goes in a completely different direction because it asks to be followed another scheme, the one put in black and white by Palazzo Chigi in a statement at dawn on July 15 after a night and exhausting negotiation with the Benettons.

Atlantia’s answer, that Huffpost is able to anticipate, rejects the line that the Cassa has indicated in several points of its letter and that is that the only scheme that can lead to an agreement is the one that envisages as a first step its entry into the capital of Autostrade through an increase of reserved capital. Atlantia, on the other hand, says that the path is different, the one decided by all its partners. Two possibilities: the sale of 88% of Autostrade on the market or the spin-off of Autostrade. Strada, the latter, which involves the exit of the motorway company from the enclosure of the parent company and the creation of a new company (Autostrade Concessioni e Costruzioni) where 55% of Autostrade will end up, while another 33% will remain in the hands of Atlantia , which will sell it or, in case of non-sale, will transfer it to the new company. And just today this double road has been launched. It already has an expiration date: December 16, the deadline for offers. Another element that attests the company’s willingness to go straight.

In the press release accompanying the board’s decision, Atlantia underlined that this double track is aimed “at both CDP and other institutional investors”. But this indication, read by Atlantia as an open door for the Cassa, was instead interpreted by the same counterpart as an open door for everyone and therefore not exclusive. More. If Atlantia links this new scheme to the need to have the consent of all its shareholders and to follow a market logic, in the other field of the negotiation the move is seen as a disregard of the commitments made and as an overcoming of those conditions that instead they protected the Cassa from many points of view, starting with the price to pay to be in the game. The government is also on the same wavelength because legitimizing Atlantia’s new path means disavowing the one celebrated at Palazzo Chigi two and a half months ago. The friction that has been generated between the two game schemes risks costing Conte and his team a lot because the role of CDP goes from being the first actor and center of gravity of the new Autostrade to an indefinite one.

But the distances between Atlantia and the Cassa, now very close to the breaking point, do not concern only the game scheme. One of the points that CDP has made clear in the letter is that of indemnity. The Cassa asks not to have to answer in the future for the responsibilities for indirect damages that could be ascertained during the trial on the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa, thus finding itself having to bear the cost of compensation that could be billionaires. But Atlantia does not intend to back down on this point, giving maximum availability to open its own data room which contains all the risk assessments made over the years.

The letter from Atlantia says it is unwilling to return to the July 15 scheme. And at the same time the Cassa has made it clear that this is the only way. In between there is a week, at least for CDP, which quantified in seven days the maximum limit to receive “a positive and timely constructive feedback from Atlantia”. Otherwise, the Cassa always writes, “one can only acknowledge the impossibility of continuing the confrontation”. Immediately after, it is also written: “Always in the spirit of responsibility and collaboration that has characterized our presence in the negotiations from the beginning, the full availability to meet at any time starting from today is confirmed again”. Atlantia, however, responded by reiterating its motivations and beliefs.

And then there is the Government. Transport Minister Paola De Micheli says that “the government is not willing to delay for an infinite time”. Threat or not, Conte went back to talking about revocation with the ministers involved in the game. Like two and a half months ago. Except that compared to two and a half months ago there were the celebrations at Palazzo Chigi, the exultation of the 5 stars for the “expulsion” of the Benettons, a negotiation between CDP and Atlantia ended in blows of letters. Meanwhile, institutional and foreign funds are sprouting. Interested in understanding how they can be in the game. Redesigning it. Because getting your hands on part or all of Autostrade means something else than that “We have a highway” pronounced by more than one in the government two and a half months ago.

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