The day long awaited by the bondholders of the four banks rescued by the government last November has arrived. The Council of Ministers will be held on Friday 29 April to approve the by now famous decree on banks. The provision contains the criteria relating to the compensation allocated to savers who have lost their money due to the default of Banca Marche, Carichieti, Carife and Banca Etruria.
The provision will specify the valid rules for repayments to be allocated to bank bondholders. From a temporal point of view, the date identified as a watershed is August 2013, the month in which the EU directive on burden sharing was launched. Those who have invested their money before the set deadline will receive repayments automatically. On the other hand, those who have subscribed the subordinated bonds in a subsequent period will have to rely on arbitration.
As regards the amount of resources to be allocated to savers, the funds should almost triple, going from 100 to 280-300 million euros.
The package of rules aimed at facilitating debt collection, especially by banks, should also be included in the decree law. The debut of the institution of the non-possessory pledge is expected on the debtor's movable property, but also (this is still in doubt) on the controlling shares of the companies. The strengthening of the position of the creditor could also provide for greater responsibility for the corporate control bodies (from the board of statutory auditors to the auditors). The latter could receive both the ownership of the bankruptcy request and the task of urging the administrators to implement recovery actions.
Finally, it should be emphasized that today the Bank of Italy presented the annual report of the resolution fund. The document states that the transfer value of the four rescued banks drops by around 400 million, to just over 1,4 billion from the preliminary 1,8 billion, due to new restructuring costs necessary to ensure satisfactory profitability of new institutes for sale. In other words, the price at which the four institutes can be sold will decrease compared to previously expected.
Going into detail, the value of Nuova Banca Marche's equity investment was reduced to 840 million from 1,04 billion, 168 million from the previous 191 for Nuova Carife; for Carichieti the investment is now worth 97 million (141); for Banca Etruria the value of the equity investment fell to 318 million (it was 442 million in the provisional valuation).
The assets of the Fund therefore dropped to 1,559 billion from 1,9 billion.
