The economist Marco Onado is absolutely right to point out, in yesterday's Il Sole 24 Ore, that the postponement of the capital increase of Monte dei Paschi, which came out of the very tense meeting on Saturday after the successful action of the Foundation at the expense of the bank's top management Sienese, "is not at all neutral" both for the costs that lie ahead for the bank for the lack of savings of the Monti-bonds for about 130 million euros and for the disturbing uncertainties surrounding MPS and the market conditions in which between five months the longed-for recapitalization will take place.
It is true that it was difficult to find a composition of clearly conflicting interests such as those of the bank and its urgent need for recapitalization passionately supported by its president Alessandro Profumo and those of the Foundation pursued so as not to be diluted by the new number one Antonella Mansi, supported by Confindustria, but it would be simplistic to classify all this as a simple clash between strong personalities.
The real problem is understanding the exact stakes and taking advantage of the warning that arrived in time from the Monetary Fund in its periodic report on Italy, which noted that the restructuring of the Monte "is of critical importance not only for the bank but for the entire banking system and for the entire Italian system. Other than a new edition of the Palio di Siena in a banking version and nothing more than a corporate clash or between local feuds.
It is time to understand that the game being played on MPS is a national game and that, as such, it requires primary national and institutional subjects to take the field, starting with the Treasury and the Bank of Italy, if we do not want to rush risks that would jeopardize not only the future of the Sienese bank, its shareholders and its depositors but the credibility and stability of the entire banking system and of the whole country, especially on the eve of the fearsome tests by the ECB on credit quality of the main European banks.
There is certainly no need to make improper comparisons with the daring and dramatic American events of September 2008, but it took the unexpected bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers to make the whole world understand the systemic effect that the crisis of a large bank can have on the whole of the economic and financial system. Even with all the differences in the case, it is evident that the impasse of Siena cannot be taken lightly. Mps is not Lehman but there is no time to lose and it is time for the Bank of Italy to activate all its moral suasion and for the Treasury to activate all its tools to give the Tuscan bank a stable and secure future, even cost of selling some of Monte's assets if this were indispensable.
"Finding a nucleus of investors truly willing to believe in the bank's recovery and to give certainties after the recapitalization", as Onado hopes, is not easy but it is the best way to go to get out of the dreadful uncertainty that the outcome of the Saturday's meeting broadcasts not only to Siena but to the entire Italian banking system.
