Post 244. Is Telstra-Australia going the same way as Telecom-Italy?
http://www.beppegrillo.it/en/2010/04/beppe_grillo_addresses_the_tel_1.html
Is Telstra-Australia going the same way as Telecom-Italy?
Telecom is busy dying. When a company outsources its best IT experts and engineers in the interests of efficiency, then the company has no future. 3000 of the Country’s best were outsourced to a great mixed bag called SSC, which was then “empowered” and then sold off at leisure. What kind of future does any country have that fires its engineers and imports low-cost labour? Telecom must be sold off as soon as possible to Telefonica or to some other major international Group, before the current shareholders can suck all the meat off its bones. Telecom may be dead, but at least we can still transplant its organs so as to save the few remaining jobs.
Telecom Chairman, Galateri, said that: “there is debt that has to be reduced and we will do so”, but how does he propose to do this if he continues to pay out dividends to the shareholders every year, this year included? The house is burning and these guys are using all the remaining available water to take a shower. In the past ten years, the debt has remained the same while the shareholders and managers have become wealthy and Telecom has “reduced its waistline”, as Galatieri so elegantly put it. Instead, the shareholders’ waistline has ballooned, while Telecom shares that were worth about 8 Euro each in 2003, are now worth little more than one Euro each. In 2009, Telecom’s revenues amounted to 27.1 billion Euro and the company’s debt was 34 billion Euro. In other words, its debt exceeded its revenues by 7 billion Euro.
Revenues have declined by 6.3% when compared to 2008 and are expected to decline by another 3% in 2010. And now, after having sold off almost everything in the past ten years, from shareholdings abroad, to real estate, through to its innovative companies such as Telespazio, Italtel and Sirti, it has now been announced that the next asset up for sale is Telecom Italia’s 50% stake in Telecom Argentina.
They talk about making investments in the coming years, but the Network is like a sieve and Italy is bottom of the list in Europe in terms of widespread access to broadband services.
As a Chartered Accountant by trade, I would like to do a simple accounting exercise. Given that over the past ten years, Telecom has sold off almost all of its shareholdings, its buildings and even its telephone exchanges, reduced its staff by almost 50%, reduced its revenues, reduced its investments, almost zeroed the value of its shares and, notwithstanding all of this, its debt has remained unchanged at 34 billion Euro, then it raises an interesting question, namely, precisely what happened to all the money? Who is it that has destroyed this Country’s top company in the field of innovation, which was built up using the taxes of entire generations of Italians?
The money landed up in million-Euro stock options and in dividend payments to well-heeled shareholders that have eaten Telecom alive, that’s where! We need to investigate the financial background of the managers that have run Telecom over the past few years in order to see what their assets were before and after their entry into Telecom. To check whether or not they benefited personally, directly or indirectly, from the operations they carried out in these past few years, selling off Telecom assets. This destruction of Telecom Italia’s value has been the worst damage ever done to this Country, both in terms of the economy and in terms of innovation. The shareholders and workers, as well as the future generations, have paid and will continue to pay the price. Those responsible for this catastrophe, whether they are politicians or businessmen, must be prosecuted.
Bernabè is someone that I greatly admire as a manager, but he has failed to do what any honest person ought to do, namely, call the previous management to account, including everyone from Colaninno to Tronchetti and from Buora to Ruggiero, for their involvement in the Telecom Sparkle fake invoicing scandal, their shares, their huge earnings and, in some cases, for their use of the company for personal gain. The spying activity carried out by Telecom employees on tens of thousands of people has seriously tarnished the company’s image. Who is going to pay for this? Who is going to compensate the minority shareholders for the fact that the shares they hold have been turned into trash? Colaninno and Gnutti pocketed capital gains amounting to 1.5 billion Euro when they sold their shares to Tronchetti who was backed by the banks, but why? Why did the minority shareholders get nothing?
It was immoral for million-Euro stock options to be handed out for years while tens of thousands of people were losing their jobs.
We need some sort of law to prevent the payment of dividends by companies whose debt is equivalent to anything more than 50% of turnover. Any small to medium size business whose debt is anything more than 30% of its turnover would shut down immediately. Telecom is dead and, in order to save the remaining jobs, the company should be sold to Telefonica as soon as possible and this backbone of the economy must once again become a public company, thereby giving every operator an equal chance instead of just one.
In Italy, our broadband is somewhat narrow, the narrowest in all of Europe. This is also thanks to this government, which is holding back some 800 million Euro of incentives for the reduction of the digital divide and introducing absurd taxes, such as that on fair compensation for memories.
According to data released by the European Commission, access to broadband services in private homes in Lombardy, the most advanced of the Italian Regions, is still limited to only 36 families out of every hundred, precisely the same level as in some Europe’s poorest regions, such as la Mancha in Spain, and lower than in Poland.
The only countries that are still falling behind Italy are Rumania, Bulgaria and Greece. Without infrastructure, Italia has no future and, for that matter, not even a here and now. My dear Bernabè and Galateri, please sell what remains to Telefonica, hand this backbone back to the State and then go home, together with the rest of the members of the Board of Directors, before we face total collapse.
Comment-: I have very modestly invested in Telstra as a sign of Patriotism although the organisation is fast becoming one of the Australian jokes like the Australian cult and worship of criminals and gangsters and Mafia in general.
Can anyone imagine Australia as a Republic?
One of the latest representatives of the criminal golden Australian aristocracy, Charles Williams, nicknamed " Baby Face ", a known and convicted killer, was murdered in prison and buried with full honours in a gold-plated Funereal Casket worth over 30,000 dollars with full Roman-Apostolic-Catholic-Church's blessings!
Ma che cazzo fate oh Catholics?
Another Australian joke is the Australian Police Force, both at State and Federal levels..............just think of Milat the Yougoslav son of migrants who killed seven backpackers, KNOWN IN HIS SMALL TOWN AS HAVING HAD A CRIMINAL RECORD, yet being allowed to retain a licensed arsenal of weapons including revolvers, automatic pistols etc.
He was allowed to drive a four wheel-drive and must have obviously remained un-observed/unchecked. Had it not been for the fortuitous escape of his last intended victim, a British young tourist, he would have continued his serial killings unsuspected.
I believe Australians have as a majority, a quasi-genetic love for criminals and crime.
It has nothing to do with FAIR-GO!
There is a general tendency to put the blame for the crimes of the First-Fleet convicts on European society. The world was all like that then, with even less opportunities for everyone as there are to-day!
Islam cut off the foot and hand of the thief! We sent the bastards to the Colonies for rehabilitation.
Modern Democracies are pushing the bastards to the top, even into Governments.
Eliminate the advisory influence of the few people in the Aristocracies, moulded in the traditions of the origins of the Westminster System of Government, and you get the present Banana Republics.
What we need is not the revival of the ancient National Monarchies which have been divisive and damaging to the Western Civilisation, having directly or indirectly caused all European Wars, including the Religious Ones, but a Western Monarchic Legislative Assembly dialoguing with Parliaments and Senates.
If European convicts had been totally the fault of European society in the days of Colonisation, then how is it that Australia and America still shine to-day for a High Crime Level, in spite of their undeniable wealth and highly-sung opportunities?
If the opportunities are chimeric why not stop, even if temporarily, from having migratory invasions stressing the system?
As Honouable Bailieu ( Vic. Parliament) well said, we must cease from using/abusing migrants to stimulate the economy as this has become a vicious dependence in Australians, like a substance-abuse, but rather develop the economy.
The two Villa Units after mine are lived in by three times the number of people normally allowed by Health Regulations. In one there are even two children and three adult couples, a total of eight people.
They have no choice but overcrowd as the rent is exhorbitant, charged by a Maltese ex-migrant turned wealthy, a Mr. Cavalieri, who also happens to be an electrician.
Yet no-one does or says anything!
I spit on Thee you damned democratic hypocrits!
Comments
Southern Italy's problems are caused by southern Italians, no one else. Notwithstanding the billions sent to the south through la Cassa del Mezzogiorno, southern Italy has not developed. Where this money has gone is open to speculation, however, it has not served to develop Southern Italy.
By the way, does this author believe that the treasury of the Gran Ducato di Toscana, for example, was not tranferred to the north. Please spare us.