The Poste Italiane–TIM transaction remains under close scrutiny by the national press. “A major player aiming to become a leading tech and services hub” is the headline used by Il Sole 24 Ore, which explains: “The objective is to build ‘the largest connected infrastructure platform in Italy’. The statement released to the stock market by Poste, regarding the strategy underlying its move to bring TIM in-house, makes this immediately clear: not a simple acquisition, but a step that – at least in its intentions – would represent a sort of Big Bang in the telecommunications and digital market, leading to the creation of a large integrated group, publicly guided in governance and industrial in mission, bringing together network, cloud, data centres, distribution, payments, insurance, logistics and digital services.”
The integrated offering
Il Sole notes that some synergies are already a reality: “PosteMobile is migrating to the Telecom network, with an expected value of around €100 million in annual revenues for TIM. For its part, the telco has introduced Poste’s electricity and gas offering (TIM Energia powered by Poste) in more than 750 stores, set to rise to 1,200. Poste insurance policies for consumers and SMEs are already available in TIM retail outlets. These are concrete signs of an integration that has so far been limited in scope.” However, the aim now is “to build an end-to-end offering combining connectivity, cloud, cybersecurity, IoT and digital services. It is within this framework that the new major player is taking shape. No longer a traditional telco, but a tech services platform.”
A unique case in Europe
Corriere della Sera highlights that the transaction is “a unique case in Europe”, as it involves “the merger of two major national groups into a single conglomerate that will be able to rely on 13,000 post offices, 4,000 TIM retail outlets, a mobile and fixed network, data centres, sovereign cloud, cybersecurity, banking, insurance, energy and logistics services. An integrated offering capable of competing with US giants in the field of digital services, on which the speed of innovation and growth of our companies also depends, under the direction of the State as shareholder,” the newspaper concludes.
