(Finance) – After the presentation of the industrial plan, poorly received by the market, there is a record number of bearish bets for the Tim stock. The bearish positions against Tim – reports the Financial Times – have “at least doubled” reaching their peak in almost twenty years. In fact, according to data from S&P Global on securities lending, considered a reliable indicator of the short positions on a company, the shares on loan have risen to 19.33% of the capital, a share which – writes the British newspaper – “marks the highest level of short positions since 2005” and whose market value amounts to approximately 930 million euros. Among the short sellers are Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and London-based hedge fund Qube Research & Technologies, betting against 0.5% and 0.72% of Telecom Italia shares, respectively.
All this while theTim’s CEO, Pietro Labriola, is running for confirmation of his mandate in the April assembly. “When you suddenly see investors shorting a stock as in this case it is generally due to a major event – comments an anonymous analyst from the Financial Times –. In the case of Telecom, the CEO’s plan seems too little to explain the size of what is happening.” At the basis of the boom in shares on loan – this is the hypothesis that is appearing in these hours – there could be a maneuver aimed at influencing the outcome of the April meeting: the securities can in fact be used to vote in the battle that will pit the list of the board of directors, which re-nominates Labriola and which is supported by Cdp and the government, and that of Merlyn fund, which in addition to the network, intends to sell Tim Brasil and the Service co, reducing Tim to a Tech company focused on Enterprise. The candidates are not known although the fund offormer banker Alessandro Barnaba – whose co-founder Maarten Petermann, as reported by the FT, he helped organize a visit by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro – he could focus on former Tim manager, Stefano Siragusa.
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