Veneto Banca and Popolare di Vicenza risk not being able to be saved by the state and having to face the bail-in. The reason is that, European rules in hand, the public hand can only intervene if at least 80% of the shareholders adhere to the settlement offer, i.e. the agreement under which an institution undertakes to provide partial compensation for losses suffered by the shareholders in exchange for their waiver of the legal action.
Basically, state aid is possible only on condition that the unknown factor linked to the disputes (whose estimated value is 5 billion euros) on the alleged fraud in the sale of shares of the two institutes is eliminated. Otherwise it is very probable that the banks would not have the necessary capital ratios to benefit from the preventive recapitalization by the State.
The problem is that so far only 34% of the 169 members of Veneto Banca and Pop Vicenza have adhered to the offer and time is now running out. There are only 14 days left to reach the 80 percent threshold. Yesterday the managing director of Popvi and head of the strategic committee of Veneto Banca, Fabrizio Viola, and the minister Pier Carlo Padoan spoke about this in a meeting in Rome in via XX Settembre. And no official comments have arrived, except that it was an "interlocutory" meeting.
Meanwhile, the EU Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, has opened up the possibility that, if there has been a fraudulent sale, the shareholders "may be compensated through arbitration or directly, if it is shown that many have been victims". An EU spokesman specified in the evening that the reference was not to state aid in favor of shareholders: "The responsibility for correcting cases of abusive sales rests with the seller of the products in question, i.e. the banks".
