MILANO – The construction and concessions group headed by Florentino Perez dreams big, in addition to the football glories of Real Madrid, the Spanish entrepreneur goes to conquer the North American highways and seeks financial partners.
According to reports from Five days, the Spanish giant Acs would have initiated contacts with some of the most important investment funds in infrastructure to create the largest group in the world in the sector. During the shareholders’ meeting last May, Chairman Perez told the shareholders that he wanted to take an alternative route if the offer presented to Atlantia to take over Autostrade per l’Italia (Aspi) had failed. Acs expects to close the sale of its Cobra Industrial Services business to Vinci by the end of the year with estimated revenues of approximately 5 billion.
In addition to the significant capital gains from this transaction, Perez and his team are looking to make incoming cash profitable as soon as possible with a focus on highways. But the possibility of investing in Aspi has vanished, which in the meantime has been taken over by the consortium led by Cdp, together with Blackstone and Macquarie, Acs would be studying to create a fund together with the investment funds in which to converge its minority stake in Abertis (50.1% is in the hands of Atlantia dei Benetton) and the activities of Iridium, assets from which to start making new investments, including green fields. The governance model and shareholdings will depend on the final configuration of the shareholder structure.
Second Five days, once structured, Perez’s new entity would like to focus its attention on the United States and the infrastructure plan that the U.S. president, Joe Biden, has pledged to accomplish. By doing so, ACS would in fact compete directly against Atlantia, of which it is now a minority partner through Abertis.
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