PRESS RELEASE

POSTAL SERVICES: ANTITRUST LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO POSTE ITALIANE FOR POSSIBLE ABUSE OF DOMINANT POSITION IN THE LIBERALIZED POSTAL SERVICES SECTOR

The proceeding shall determine whether Poste offers VAT-free final prices to its final customers for individually-negotiated postal services, making offers that are impossible for its competitors to duplicate.

On 06^th March 2012, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato decided to launch an investigation into Poste Italiane to determine whether this company has abused its dominant position in the sector of liberalized postal services.

The proceeding will need to determine whether Poste's practices configure an abuse of dominant position in violation of art. 102 of the Treaty of Europe, should it be established that this entity has been waiving the VAT for individually-negotiated services. Since all postal operators are required to apply the value added tax to their prices, the formulation of VAT-free offers would constitute a considerable competitive advantage for Poste Italiane.

This would leave Poste in a position to formulate offers on the basis of special fiscal treatment, as opposed to economic efficiency, that could be impossible to duplicate. Such offers would cost at least 20% less than the prices that could be formulated by competitors, who would be prevented from acquiring demand shares in the unreserved liberalized sectors (bulk mail, national and international priority mail, registered mail, insured mail, stamps and packages).

The Antitrust will need to examine Poste Italiane's conduct in view of national and Community laws and most importantly the Court of Justice's

23^rd April 2009 judgment and interpretations (which became immediately applicable in the domestic legal framework, reflecting the proper and integral transposition of Community rules into the national context), which hold that individually-negotiated services should be excluded from the VAT exemption.

For this purpose, the investigation will also need to assess (wherever necessary and appropriate) to what extent this corporation's behaviors were imposed or facilitated by legal provisions for the sector and to draw upon the decisions of the Community courts in order to make a ruling in regard to the dis-application of the law in question (art. 10, paragraph 16, Presidential Decree no. 633 of 26^th October 1972, as modified by article 2, paragraph 4-bis of decree-law no. 40 of 25^th March 2010).

The investigation shall be concluded by 04^th February 2013.

Rome, 14^th March 2012