Insurance Daily | March 2025
Once again, the hunt for the Lion of Trieste has begun, but this time the game is big with a game of risk never seen before, triggered by financial and personal reasons. From a financial point of view, Generali is a goose that lays golden eggs, with results that have been growing for years and an international presence, rare qualities among large Italian companies, certainly the potential is still enormous both in Italy and in Europe where unexplored prairies await serious and capable insurers.
Generali is tempting for banks that, hungry for commission margins, more complex to obtain given the progressive lowering of rates, see the protection business and savings management as an Eldorado.
On personal matters, the first shareholder of Generali – Mediobanca – founded in 1946, has grown considering as a mantra the phrase attributed to its founder Enrico Cuccia for which “shares are weighed, not counted”.
So, the distance between the Mediobanca bankers and the two large private shareholders – Del Vecchio and Caltagirone – who count for a lot but feel they have little weight is first and foremost cultural and has ancestral origins that start from some anomalies.
Mediobanca’s participation in Generali is an anomalous case for an investment bank: tying up so much capital for years in a company that is not instrumental to its business has no rational explanation, other than that of having – precisely – a weight in the world of finance. In this sense, Alberto Nagel’s statement “we can use the Generali share to make acquisitions” (London 18 March 2025 European Financials conference by Morgan Stanley) marks an epochal turning point, even if perhaps a little out of time.
On the other hand, if it is legitimate for the two large private shareholders to want to protect their investment, it is equally anomalous for them to act like an activist fund that aims to overthrow the top management of a company in which they participate at every good opportunity in order to acquire control of it.
The latest opportunity was provided by Generali CEO Philippe Donnet, a former rugby player, who, as his mandate expired, announced an agreement in the asset management of Generali Investments with the French Natixis, sparking – as was predictable in an era in which sovereignism reigns – many doubts and mostly negative reactions in our country.
And as was equally predictable, all this has unleashed a war without quarter between OPA/OPS, cross-shareholdings, conflicts of interest, in an all-against-all, which Italy honestly does not need.
What future can we hope for the largest and most renowned Italian insurance company, for its shareholders, employees and customers? A proposed integration with UniCredit would make many dreams and would allow Andrea Orcell to realize his plan by creating a mega international banking and insurance group for which he recruited the Ronaldo of insurance (Alessandro Santoliquido) in good time.
But Orcel cannot count without the host, Intesa Sanpaolo, whose top management will be reconfirmed on April 29, exactly five days after the Generali meeting on April 24. In fact, Ca de’ Sass, together with the other funds grouped in Assogestioni, has prepared a list of directors alternative to the one proposed by Mediobanca and the Caltagirone group, to express – as is right – its own voice independently and autonomously and in compliance with the interests of its funds.
Coincidentally, Intesa Sanpaolo has just granted a maxi-loan of half a billion euros to Caltagirone who has pledged part of his shares in Mediobanca, Generali and Monte dei Paschi di Siena: a provision that will serve to increase the weight both in the assembly of Monte and in that of Leone.
It is now established that financial consultancy, protection and asset management are an inseparable and necessary triptych for those who want to weigh and not just count in the market (Enrico Cuccia docet).
Nicola Ronchetti