An agreement has been found for the creation of “Atlante”, the new fund that will guarantee the recapitalization of Italian banks and the purchase of part of the non-performing loans. This is the outcome of the meeting that took place yesterday at the Treasury. The project envisages that the banks themselves and the operators of the financial world put the money in the asset management company, so that the State is not involved and it is therefore not necessary to ask for the ok to avoid the aid prohibited by the EU. What is looming will not be a systemic operation and this should reassure Europe but it takes the form of an intervention by the "willing".
An existing asset management company will be used to launch Atlante: Quaestio, owned by the Cariplo Foundation. The initial endowment should be 2,5 billion and then rise to over 7 billion. The CDP would provide minority resources (about 200-300 million) in order not to incur state aid. Another 500 million could come from banking foundations and the rest will be supported by the big names in private finance.
Atlante will therefore be an alternative investment fund (fia) that Quaestio Sgr will launch to support the recapitalization of Italian banks and encourage the disposal of bad debts in the system. This was communicated in a note by the management company chaired by Alessandro Penati. “Following meetings with a large number of institutional investors, banks, insurance companies, banking foundations and Cdp – reads the note – Quaestio has reached an important number of adhesions to launch the Atlante Fund”.
The first objective is "to ensure the success of the capital increases requested by the Supervisory Authority to banks that today find themselves facing objective market difficulties, acting as a back stop facility".
The second goal is suffering. Atlante "will concentrate its investments on the junior tranche of securitization vehicles, being able to leverage those with greater seniority for which there is a manifest interest on the part of investors".
The Atlante fund, continues the note, “aims to eliminate the high discount at which the market values Italian financial institutions due to: the stock of non-performing loans which has quadrupled since 2007 due to the severity of the recession; long credit recovery times, well above the European average; of the massive capital increases required by the devaluations; the uncertainty about the ability of some institutions to successfully complete the increases requested by the Supervisory Authority”.
The government appreciates the initiative of the Atlante Fund and announces new measures for debt collection. This is what was written in a long note released in the evening regarding the launch of the alternative investment fund for the banking system. For Renzi, “this private operation is useful. In Italy there is an active and responsible market that is tackling problems with its own resources, without asking for public money".
According to Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan, "the fund is an instrument that will help complete the process of strengthening the capital solidity of Italian banks and increase the non-performing loan market".
