In June 2022 the Draghi government vetoed the signing between the Chinese group Efort Intelligent Equipment and the Piedmontese company Robox SpA of a technical license agreement to access source codes and other technological know-how, for which the Chinese group offered 1 million euros.
On the other hand, no objection was raised by the Italian government regarding the 9% increase in the Chinese shareholding in the Italian company for a value of 2 million euros. The shareholders of the Italian company are: 40% Roberto Montorsi (together with Franca Pesce, Marzio Montorsi and Lea Montorsi with usufruct rights and bare ownership), 10% by Marzio Montorsi, 10% by Lea Montorsi and 40% from the Chinese group Efort Intelligent Equipment. After the described operation, the Chinese side would pass to 49% while the Italian side to 51%.
Robox, founded in 1975, deals with the design and production of electronic equipment, programming languages, development environments for robotics, for the numerical control of machine tools and in general for motion control.
The company has about 40 employees and a share capital of 1.1 million euros. It is led by a Board of Directors composed of Roberto Montorsi, Lea Montorsi and Wei You (general manager of Efort).
This is the fifth veto placed by Italy on Sino-Italian operations. Previously, Golden Power had already been exercised in the semiconductor, seed, screen printing and aviation sectors.
Avv. Lifang Dong and Avv. Chiara Civitelli
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