Marco Mazzucchelli and Jean Pierre Mustier
Enel, showdown at the meeting. But the real problem is the capital that has fled from Italy
The adage says: “When the wise point to the moon, the fool looks at the finger”. In the controversy over Enel’s lists, the board of directors, the names that are used for roles of power you risk making the same unforgivable mistake. Because in the modern, capillary and pervasive market, you are looking for only one thing: to make money. And so, while everyone is struggling to understand whether in the end Paolo Scaroni will be able to be appointed president – and, barring incredible surprises, he will succeed in the end – many forget how we got here.
When in December 2016 Unicredit led by Jean Pierre Mustier decided to sell Pioneer Investments to Amundi, it seems that Matteo Renzi is – to put it mildly – rather annoyed. The alternative, in fact, was that it ended up in the hands of Poste Italiane. Today the French fund, thanks to Pioneer, holds 0.68% of Enel’s shares and its vote will be decisive in the meeting: will it choose the MEF list, that of Assogestioni or will it prefer that of Covalis?
This is the key point: when you sell strategic assets abroad you don’t have to indulge so much in the cloying rhetoric of being Italian. The important thing, in that case, is that employment levels and investments in the country are maintained. No, the problem is far more complex and “strategic”: the government is impoverished of a “prop”. Why it is natural to think that Poste would not have gone against the entity that defines its governance and that is its main shareholder.
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