Bilateral meeting in Rome stalls STX nationalisation and sets target for compromise
yesterday by: James Politi in Rome and Harriet Agnew in Paris
Italy and France failed to resolve their row over STX, a shipyard at Saint Nazaire on the Atlantic coast, but gave themselves until the end of September to craft a deal to preserve an investment by Italy’s Fincantieri, rather than move ahead with nationalisation.
Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, flew to Rome on Tuesday to meet Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s finance minister, and Carlo Calenda, economic development minister, to try to defuse tensions over STX, which has emerged as an unexpected strain in relations between Rome and Paris in the early months of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency.
« We are two great peoples, we are like brothers. We have a difficulty but we will find an adequate solution,” Mr Le Maire said after the meeting, which was described as tense by one Italian official.
Fincantieri, which is controlled by the Italian government, had agreed to purchase a controlling stake in STX from its South Korean owners in April, in a deal that was blessed by François Hollande, the previous French president.
But Mr Macron decided to review the transaction and, in a dramatic reversal, signalled last week that he was prepared to scrap the agreement and temporarily nationalise the shipyard unless Italian officials agreed to joint control.
Mr Macron’s move triggered anger in Italy and raised questions about the new French president’s commitment to foreign investment in the eurozone’s second-largest economy.
Italian officials insisted that Fincantieri would need to have majority ownership in order to control its operations and turn it into a European industrial champion, rejecting Mr Macron’s call for an equal split.
Mr Le Maire arrived in Rome with an overture, saying that France was prepared to let Fincantieri run the shipyard if it agreed to 50 per cent ownership. Mr Le Maire also said that Fincantieri would be allowed to name the chairman of STX, who would have a tiebreaking vote on the board.
However, Italian officials stood their ground, saying it was insufficient.
“To create a large group, one needs trust and the premise is the respect of the agreement reached on STX,” Mr Calenda said. “For now, the positions are still far apart.”
The two sides did, however, issue a joint statement pledging an “intent to overcome” their differences on STX’s capital structure through a “mutually acceptable solution” by September 27.
“During this period, the French state commits not to open the capital of STX France to any third party and to consider Fincantieri as its preferred option for the future of the company,” it said.
French officials have insisted that there is no ill will against Italy but that the previous deal was not strong enough in terms of protecting employment levels and preventing technology transfers to China.
But Italian officials have rejected the notion that their bid was weak in those areas. The suspicion in Rome is that Paris is looking for excuses to engineer a nationalisation for domestic political purposes. According to a poll by Ifop released on Sunday, 70 per cent of the French back Mr Macron’s decision on STX.
Before leaving for Rome on Tuesday, Mr Le Maire held talks with Bruno Retailleau, the centre-right governor of the Loire region where STX is based.
Mr Retailleau said an agreement with Fincantieri could only be made on two conditions. First, that Fincantieri was “not the majority shareholder of STX because it is a company owned by the Italian state” and he feared jobs would be relocated from Saint-Nazaire to Trieste. Second, that 20 local companies be allowed to enter the share capital of STX to ensure that its local anchorage was preserved.