Italy and France far away? We would not say if we consider the commercial relationships and some strategic global mergers that are in the pipeline.
Fca and Peugeot look at each other more and more, Essilor and Luxottica are already in business and then there is the question of the Tav. Then there is the ongoing clash between Tim and the first shareholder Vivendi, who owns 23,9 per 9,9, and the American activist fund Elliott, supported by the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, which has just reached XNUMX, for the control of the board of directors. The mega-merger Fincantieri and Stx still stalled with the European Antitrust which lit a beacon on the acquisition project and with the French government always undecided whether to step on grandeur or arrive at milder solutions.
As "Il Foglio" writes, Thales Alenia Space Italia in the space systems and infrastructures sector, claims, instead, an excellent relationship with Thales French. Born from the joint venture between the French company Thales (67 per cent) and the Italian Leonardo (33), it has 8 thousand employees worldwide with global revenues of 2,6 billion in 2017.
"We, like Thales Alenia Space Italia - reports the CEO to the Sheet Donato Amoroso - we continue with the usual commitment to satisfy customer requests and international collaborations both in institutional and export terms. In short, the Italian Space Industry goes on".
In the 2018 the telecommunications sector has affected the Thales Alenia Space portfolio for the 40 per cent of the total. Even if the responsibility of the telecommunications business falls under France, the contribution of the Italian division is fundamental, being specialized also in the so-called last generation flexible payloads and in the digital ones for both civil and military applications, so that a substantial part of profits are consolidated in Italy. The order book of Thales Alenia Space has a value, in Italy, of 700 million euros a year, following both institutional and export orders distributed not only in the telecommunications field but also in earth observation and exploration and science.
"Over the past few years - says the CEO, Amoroso - Thales Alenia Space has strengthened its position which has led to the opening of new markets and the acquisition of new customers, starting from Russia to move to the American continent up to Southeast Asia, in particular in South Korea and China. In the coming years, the programs are linked to exploration, such as ExoMars (on the horizon, after Mars, there is the Moon and the realization of the Space Rider program), to earth observation with the development of the new generation up to navigation with the renewal of the Galileo constellation ”. Among the many dossiers opened with France, that of Thales Alenia Space Italia seems to work as evidence of an Italy that goes beyond political controversies. The aerospace sector moves over 380 billion dollars a year globally and that for Morgan Stanley is a value that will triple within twenty years. A research carried out by ASI with the Department of Economics of the University of Roma Tre found that every euro invested in space activities produces 11 of economic return on the territory. They are not numbers from “space bales".