Real Madrid President seeks to buy Italian motorways

Florentino Perez

  ROME - Florentino Perez, the head of the Spanish civil engineering company ACS, has written to the Italian company Atlantia, expressing interest in purchasing a majority share in ASPI (Autostrade per l’Italia), offering between 9 and 10 billion euros. Perez is also the President of Real Madrid.

  Atlantia SpA, owned in part by the Benetton family, is an infrastructure company which owns 88 percent of ASPI, the company which owns and manages the majority of Italian motorways. 

  In the letter, reports Il Sole, Perez emphasised the successful partnership between ACS and Atlantia, who, together with the German infrastructure company Hochtief, in 2018 bought the Spanish infrastructure company Abertis, a world leader in toll road management.

  Perez plans to form a merger between ASPI and Abertis, creating a European motorways powerhouse.

  ACS valued the group at up to 10 billion euros, more than that offered recently by the Deposits and Loans Fund (CDP), in agreement with the Blackstone-Macquarie consortium, though less than the 11 billion euros at which Atlantia recently valued themselves. 

  Atlantia's board of directors began on Thursday to evaluate the offers, which are also backed by national and international investors.

 

ol