By Giuseppe Fonte and Angelo Amante <\/p>\n
ROME, July 14 (Reuters) – Italy will on Tuesday name senior official Guido Stazi as the new head of the Milan bourse watchdog Consob, politicians said, ending a \u200cmonths-long dispute within Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition. <\/p>\n
Stazi, 68, is currently secretary-general of Italy’s antitrust \u200cregulator and will succeed former Consob president Paolo Savona, 89, whose seven-year term ended in March. <\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told Reuters that Stazi \u200bwas on course to secure the top job at a cabinet meeting scheduled for 1530 GMT, confirming what sources had previously said. <\/p>\n
The co-ruling League party tried for months to promote the appointment of Junior Treasury Minister Federico Freni to Consob, while its government ally Forza Italia, led by Tajani, argued that a technocrat would be more suitable for the \u200crole. <\/p>\n
Opposition parties had also called for \u2060an independent figure to lead the market regulator, after a then senior economy ministry official became caught up in a judicial investigation into last year’s successful takeover of bank \u2060Mediobanca by state-backed rival Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS). <\/p>\n
ANTITRUST HEAD ALSO CLOSE TO APPOINTMENT <\/p>\n
As part of the political agreement within the coalition, the cabinet is expected to nominate Saverio Valentino, board member of the competition authority, as new head of that \u200bregulator, \u200bthe sources added. <\/p>\n
Stazi’s appointment comes at a time when the \u200bgovernment has apparently taken a less interventionist role \u200cin the Italian banking M&A wave, which Intesa Sanpaolo rekindled last month by making a \u20ac30.6 billion ($34.8 billion) unsolicited cash-and-share bid to buy MPS. <\/p>\n
His arrival at Consob also follows long-running efforts by the government to address issues holding back the country’s capital markets and boost the Milan stock exchange’s ability to compete with European peers. <\/p>\n
Consob’s annual report released on Monday showed that 199 large companies were listed at the end of 2025, down from 239 in \u200c2019 and about 300 in 2005. No companies went public on \u200bthe main market last year, while 11 were delisted. <\/p>\n
As Consob chief, \u200bStazi will have to oversee the regulator’s conclusions \u200bon whether a hidden shareholder pact to gain control of insurance company Generali was \u200cbehind the MPS acquisition of Mediobanca. <\/p>\n
The Treasury holds \u200ba 4.9% stake in MPS, \u200bwhile Mediobanca has historically been Generali’s main shareholder. <\/p>\n
Prosecutors in Milan are probing whether MPS CEO Luigi Lovaglio acted in coordination with the bank’s two major investors, while keeping authorities and investors in the dark. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Giuseppe Fonte and Angelo Amante ROME, July 14 (Reuters) – Italy will on Tuesday name senior official…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[469,4044,325,22134,5,13838,22135],"class_list":["post-32213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-antonio-tajani","tag-consob","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-guido-stazi","tag-italy","tag-mediobanca","tag-paolo-savona"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}