With reference to the declaration made by US company BlackRock Inc. to the US Security Exchange Commission on 9 December 2013, through Schedule 13G pursuant to the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which indicates that said company has acquired ownership of shares and voting rights in Telecom Italia S.p.A. equal to 1,360,108,064 shares, corresponding to 10.14% of the ordinary share capital of the Company, the latter announces:
- that it has received no communication on this from BlackRock Inc., pursuant to national law or otherwise;
- that it collected on the financial market indications of an increase in the holding of BlackRock Inc. on Wednesday, 11 December 2013, following to the publication the previous day on Bloomberg of the news about the filing in the aforementioned Schedule 13G;
- that it contacted the offices of BlackRock Inc. for clarification, first informally (on December 11 and 13), and then with a formal request for explanations (on December 14) to which no answer has been received yet;
- that the list of communications from intermediaries attesting their entitlement to attend and vote at the Shareholders' Meeting called for 20 December 2013, available and processed as at Friday, 13 December, did not include communications neither on behalf of BlackRock Inc. or any entities qualified by the latter as direct shareholders of Telecom Italia as non-discretional asset managers pursuant the notification to Consob and the Company on 8 October 2013 pursuant to art. 120, legislative decree 58/1998 (cf. Consob website www.consob.it), or any of the subsidiaries listed in the aforementioned Schedule 13G (cf. SEC website www.sec.gov).
In this respect the Company would point out that, by law, all communications received by the issuer before the start of the proceedings of the shareholders' meeting are valid and efficacious for entitlement to attend and vote at the Shareholders' Meeting (art. 83-sexies, subsection 4, legislative decree 58/1998: “Communications […] must reach the issuer by the end of the third trading day before [...]. The entitlement to attend and vote still holds if the communications reach the issuer after the time indicated in this subsection, provided this is before the start of the proceedings of the shareholders meeting in single call”).
Rome, 16 December 2013
