Tension among the Ansaldo STS board

Genoa - The resounding flop of Hitachi’s takeover bid for Ansaldo STS has produced a backlash and is resulting in unknowns that will only be cleared up with time. Yesterday was the first meeting of the board of directors after the takeover bid. It was a passionate meeting, as authoritative sources have said, after which the Japanese group received support equal to only 6.416% of the stock, compared to the 60% of the capital that the public offering was aimed at.

Hitachi has increased its share of the railway signalling company from the 40% bought from Finmeccanica to 46.5%, still short of the objective of 90% to remove the company from the stock market and of course the objective of reaching at least 66.6% to be able to control the majority and therefore the merger of STS and Breda within Hitachi Rail. According to leaks, C.E.O. Stefano Siragusa wants to resign because of differences with Hitachi: the insertion of foreign managers and the shifting of some activities away from Genoa and London are at stake. Since the unions are still awaiting the industrial plan that the Japanese have yet to present, what will happen next remains to be seen. Legal questions also remain open.

The takeover closed at a price of €9.68 per share, the Regional Administrative Court of Milan was called to make a decision about the merit of the CONSOB decision on 17 May. Yesterday the board of directors approved the forecasts for 2016: orders between 1.4 and 2 billion and revenues between 1.35 and 1.45 billion. The net financial position as forecast is between 320 and 370 million.