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Messina: stop being dictated by the Ue on the npls
Said the Intesa Sanpaolo CEO yesterday evening at the ceremony for the Milano Finanza Global Awards 2017. A potential bail-in of one of the Venetian banks is a risk for the spread and for the country, he added
The bad loans are still a delicate theme for the Italian banks but perhaps overestimated. And more importantly “about the npls, it’s not appropriate to continue being dictated by who is outside Italy”.
Said the managing director of Intesa Sanpaolo, Carlo Messina, yesterday evening at the end of the ceremony for Milano Finanza Global Awards 2017.
He was referring to the European surveillance technicians who have pushed several times the banks to quickly get rid of these bad loans giving strict parameters and criteria.
For Messina, the Italian banks have guarantees and are well secured. Of course, there is still the issue about the collection times, but the banks that like Intesa Sanpaolo were able to internally organized themselves with success have solved this impasse.
Moreover, the potential dissolution of one of the two Venetian banks heading the Atlante Fund would be certainly “a failure that might have consequences on the territory, on Italy and on the spread”.
According to the banker, considered how critical the conditions of Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca are, is “fair that all the authorities that are taking care of this do their best to solve the situation and negotiate with Europe the conditions for the use of a public intervention”.
As we know, in the past few weeks the DG for Competition of the European Commission has requested the adjustment of the expected intervention to bail the two banks, reducing by one billion euro the part at the expense of the State which, according to the new scheme draft in Brussels, will be instead privates’ responsibility. A decision that found a strong opposition among the Atlante partners, united (except for Poste Italiane, which through its president Bianca Maria Farina has said to be open to evaluating a new intervention) in returning to the sender any hypothesis of recapitalization aimed at injecting new assets in the two banks, covering in this way the one billion requested.
Together with Unicredit, Ca’ de Sass was in the past the main contributor to the financial assets of the vehicle of Quaestio Capital, for a total commitment of 2 billion euro equally distributed. These assets in total, if summed altogether the intervention of banks, insurance companies, foundations, Cdp and Poste, have achieved to create a plafond of 5 billion. “Atlante first intervened with 2.5 billion (1.5 billion to purchase Bpvi and 1 billion to purchase Veneto Banca)”, reminded Messina, “then last January it signed for an additional one billion, at the condition that the following intervention would have been public. I believe we must end this sequence of events, first by closing the negotiation with Europe and then –based on the results- defining the next steps. We need to renegotiate with Europe the conditions of a bank that must have perspectives of profitability. We’ll see how the negotiation will end, then we’ll make further considerations”.
“I think the intervention should be public” repeated the CEO of Intesa Sanpaolo, “because the one billion injected by Atlante last January was agreed in order to permit the public intervention. It’s not possible to start all over every time”.
Regarding the Italian situation in general, Messina doesn’t see any particular risks related to potential early elections, but he’s instead interested in “a financial measure which would protect Italy from any type of financial risk. This is absolutely necessary”.
The banker explained that another election after the summer wouldn’t be ”any good or bad for who is a banker. What would be harmful instead is not doing a financial measure and not protecting the State budget, because this is a country burdened by a public debt that has kept growing in the last few years without decreasing” said Messina. “At a certain point, when the Quantitative Easing will be over, somebody will ask for the bill”.