Mediolanum, EU court annuls ECB’s ruling: “Berlusconi could have qualified shareholding”

Brussels – The European Central Bank acted against EU law by preventing Silvio Berlusconi from participating in Mediolanum, according to a judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU that rejected and annulled the decision of the ECB in 2016 at the time of the events led by Mario Draghi, to ban the transaction. The ECB “made an error of law,” according to the Luxembourg judges, who were called upon to rule on a case that was not simple.

In 2014, the Bank of Italy ordered within 30 months the sale of Fininvest’s stake in Mediolanum in excess of 9.99 percent and the immediate suspension of voting rights following Berlusconi’s conviction for tax fraud. The Council of State rejected the Bank of Italy’s claims in 2016. In the meantime, however, in 2015, Mediolanum was absorbed by its subsidiary Banca Mediolanum. Berlusconi thereby acquired the voting rights and the qualified shareholding that the ECB in 2016 ordered to eliminate, but it was an already acquired right, not a new one, obtained in 2015.

This is where the ECB got it wrong. Berlusconi “merely continued to own a qualifying holding which had been acquired well before, on a date when the provisions of EU law applied by the ECB had not yet been transposed into Italian law.” As those provisions “are devoid of retroactive effect, the ECB could not legitimately oppose Mr Berlusconi’s ownership of a qualifying holding in Banca Mediolanum.”