Ringing out the cash

Ever since Marco Tronchetti Provera bought Telecom Italia with buckets of debt in 2001, the Pirelli boss has been like a hamster on a wheel. He needs to keep running otherwise one or other of the companies through which he controls the group might run out of cash. Tronchetti is now having to sprint again. This time it’s because of a deal he did with two banks, Intesa and Unicredit, which helped him buy TI. He promised to buy them out of the TI shares at the same fantastic price that they paid. ...