The key difference between Carlo de Benedetti and the typical American corporate raider like T Boone Pickens or Carl Icahn is that he is an investor, not a trader – the Wall Street Journal notes that he fired the first chairman of his French vehicle, Cerus, because the man wanted to take a quick profit on one of its investments: in the context of Olivetti’s investment in Acorn Computers Plc, that means that although force majeure left Olivetti with almost 80% of the equity, rather more than it would have chosen to hold, while it will be happy to see its holding reduced by a new issue of Acorn shares, it is not a seller of its holding; Acorn points out that the 20% or so of its equity that is traded on the Unlisted Securities Market represents 7,000 holders of 16m shares.
