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Italians have a word — gattopardismo, from the novel The Leopard — to describe apparent change that does not actually alter the country’s real structure of power and privilege. The demise of Italy’s Mediobanca could usefully be described in such terms.
The bank run by Alberto Nagel abandoned its bid to acquire wealth management business Banca Generali, a division of insurer Generali, on Thursday, when the €6.3bn deal was quashed by its own shareholders. Mediobanca now looks likely to succumb to a hostile takeover from smaller rival Monte dei Paschi di Siena, ending its life as an independent entity.
Few will mourn its passing. While somewhat modernised in recent decades, Mediobanca has historically been an enthusiastic participant in Italy’s shareholder-unfriendly power-broking tradition. Sadly, the manner of its end suggests that such wheelings and dealings will outlive it.
Most international institutional investors in Mediobanca had supported its plan to buy Banca Generali. But a clutch of Italian tycoons with big stakes led the field of those who did not. Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone and the Del Vecchio family, of Luxottica fame, together own about 28 per cent. They also own 20 per cent of Mediobanca’s predator Monte dei Paschi.
Another long-standing feature of Italian finance is the fixation with gaining control — ideally without paying a premium — of Generali itself. That too, should live on. Caltagirone and Delfin have a 17 per cent stake in Generali, and have in the past failed to install new management. Mediobanca owns a further 13 per cent. Should that now fall to Monte dei Paschi, the tycoons would be better able to extend their influence.
The one bright spot in the whole drama is that a combination between Monte dei Paschi and Mediobanca — while not the best banking deal out there — has some advantages. Lex has previously calculated that it might create almost €3bn of value, or 10 per cent per cent of the market capitalisation of the two companies combined. Mediobanca’s shareholders would account for about 60 per cent of the combined entity.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, has played a behind-the-scenes role in this saga. The government owns a stake in Monte dei Paschi, which may have prompted some Italian investors to withhold their backing for Nagel’s plan. This is a more subtle intervention than, say, the US’s move to take a pre-emptive stake in Intel. But it is not less concerning because of it. The tradition of leopardism is alive and well.
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