Crucial days for Banca Popolare di Bari, the largest bank in the South which, in harmony with the Bank of Italy, is preparing to take vital decisions for its future and for its 69 shareholders by January. On the table of the board of directors is the plan prepared by the new CEO Vincenzo De Bustis, who returned just a few weeks ago to lead the Apulian bank, controlled by the Jacobini family.
The cornerstones of the project to relaunch the Popolare di Bari are mainly two: the new industrialist and the capital strengthening programme. De Bustis has prepared them together with the advisor Rothschild and the internal managers and is ready to submit them for examination by the board of directors. But it is clear that the industrial plan and capital strengthening will not be isolated moves but will have to be read and implemented in relation to the bank's transformation project into a joint stock company, which will probably take place before the deadline recently extended by one year by the government.
Business plan, capital strengthening and transformation into a joint stock company are the prerequisites for subsequently also thinking about new mergers towards which the Bank of Italy is pushing to secure the banks most exposed to the winds of the economic situation and to the regulatory pincers of the European Supervisory Authority.
The industrial plan will aim to strengthen the most profitable assets and to modernize the Popolare di Bari in the name of digitization but also to reduce or park in a special vehicle the non-performing loans which weigh down the performance of a bank like few others rooted in the territory of the whole southern Adriatic area and the inland areas of Puglia, Basilicata, Abruzzo and Molise where it has 350 branches.
Several options are still open on the side of capital strengthening which should allow the bank to rake in a sum that fluctuates between 200 and 300 million either through a capital increase or through the issue of a subordinated bond, which currently seems the way more probable at least in the first instance and for which surveys are underway with both domestic and foreign investors. In favor of this option is also the consideration that the capital increase - in addition to the difficulties persisting in the operation - would end up diluting the shareholdings of the shareholders, with whom the Bank's top management wants to strengthen relations and definitively resolve the dispute on the negotiability of the shares and on refunds in the event of withdrawal linked to the transformation of Popolare into a spa. In fact, De Bustis' plan includes incentives, in the form of warrants, aimed at satisfying and retaining shareholders, especially the smallest ones who have had difficulty selling their shares.
If the plan is approved and achieves its objectives for Banca Popolare di Bari, a new phase can thus be opened capable of equipping the bank to withstand the challenges imposed by the Supervision of the ECB and the Bank of Italy and above all to support the economy of the Central South in times when the winds of recession are blowing back.
