Atlantia, new board appointed: Alessandro Benetton vice-president – Corriere.it

After the delisting, Atlantia enters 2023 with a new governance. On Monday 16 January, the shareholders’ meeting of the infrastructure company – i.e. Edizione (holding company of the Benetton family), the US Blackstone fund and the Crt Foundation – approved the new statute and appointed the new board of directors, made up of 11 members. If it had already been written that Giampiero Massolo would be reconfirmed as president, the novelty concerns the incoming names: Alessandro Benetton, the number one of Edizione, will in fact be vice president while Blackstone has chosen Jonathan Kelly (head of infrastructure), Scott Schultz (also an infrastructure) and Andrea Valeri, the latter chairman of the American private equity in Italy; Edizione then placed its managers, such as Enrico Laghi (current CEO of the Treviso holding), Ermanno Boffa, husband of Sabrina Benetton, daughter of Gilberto (also on the board of the holding), Mattia Brentari (investment manager), Christian Coco ( investment director who resists from the old board), Andrea Pezzangora (head of legal and corporate affairs).

The CEO position is still vacant

Finally, the Crt Foundation has nominated its vice president Maurizio Irrera, a Turin lawyer, professor, formerly on the Iren board of directors. The new board of statutory auditors, on the other hand, will be made up of the statutory auditors Riccardo Michelutti – as chairman -, Benedetta Navarra and Graziano Visentin. On the other hand, the managerial powers in Massolo were confirmed, while waiting to find a square on the new managing director: the name on which they leaned was that of Andre Rogowski, CFO of the Spanish Abertis Infrastrutture. At the end of March the new strategic lines should take shape and first the name of the new top manager. The board also confirmed Tiziano Ceccarani as chief financial officer. The previous CEO of Atlantia, Carlo Bertazzo, will instead remain a director of the subsidiaries Abertis and Getlink, but there are rumors of the idea of ​​setting up his own business for him.

How the delisting took place

The process for leaving Piazza Affari began after the summer and concluded on November 25 with the extra time needed to complete the takeover bid and the resignation of the old board of directors just a few days before Christmas. The tender offer to rake in the shares took place as follows: Schema 42 the HoldCo which owns 100% of BidCo Schema Alfa. The first capitalized the second in two shareholders’ meetings on 14 November, paying it 4.7 billion euros collected by Blackstone and Crt (which reinvested a part of its proceeds from Atlantia shares in the takeover bid, about 4%) then in turn paid 7 billion euros in capital funding from 22 banks. A total of 11.7 billion of liquidity used to finance the takeover bid in the first tranche, the one that stopped at 87.3% on 11 November. Edizione instead contributed its 33.1% to Schema 42, i.e. the shares already held in Atlantia, and which has a nominal value of 2.9 billion, but which at market value are equivalent to 6.6 billion. At the end of the operation, Atlantia found itself divided as follows: 57% to Edizione (through Sintonia), 37.8% to Blackstone, 5.2% to Fondazione Crt.

Activities in progress

The companies that Atlantia has in its belly in the meantime have not been idle. Just before the Christmas holidays, Aeroporti di Roma was awarded, together with Proger and Rina, the construction of the first national space-port, in the Taranto Grottaglie airport, in Puglia for a contract worth 12′ million.