Friday, 03 September 2010
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| Wednesday, 18 April 2007 | |
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Naughty word, naughty word, Telecom Italia, naughty word, AT&T, naughty word. You'd be tempted to swear as an onlooker or an investor.
Understandably, AT&T has walked away from its potential involvement in Telecom Italia. America Movil may stay involved thanks to its venal interest in TI's Latin American assets. Result? Italian business as usual. Again. Please don’t read the rest of this if you are offended by the word ‘shit’. It appears twice at the end of this article. And twice before then. With some justification: you'd need an industrial-scale digger to clear this lot. It’s 20 years or so since an Italian industrialist, the CEO of a hardware manufacturer no less (and no longer), excused himself from an interview with an insignificant foreign journalist (me) , handed a small box to a PR assistant and said simply, “hand this to the little shit and get him to go away.” He didn’t know that “little” and “shit” were two of just a handful of Italian words I can recognise without recourse to a dictionary. Now the little affair surrounding the takeover of Telecom Italia has become bigger, richer and steamier. Berlusconi, a crook so canny that he rigs the legal system in Italy to avoid prosecution (of himself), is reportedly circling (again). Pasquale Pistorio has been named as new TI chief; he’s ex-ST Micro: it’s like suggesting somebody who worked in a steel factory could be converted into a qualified cutler overnight. The knife analogy is a good one. Signs are that TI will once more be carved up by Italian economic interests with America Movil shaving off some fatty deposits in Brazil to augment its interest in Latin America. A mix of Italian finance houses (or a plague on both of them), with or without America Movil, is now likely to claim control of TI. Under Italian law this probably needs no more than a 15% stake in the company. Or as one songster wrote: “same as the old shit; let the new shit begin.” Jim Chalmers |
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