Fresh from his reconfirmation at the helm of the Bank of Italy for another six years, Ignazio Visco, in his speech at Savings Day, will take a few pebbles off his shoe or fly high but, above all, will he or not address the open question of the inadequacy of the rules and of men from Banking Supervision, which clearly exploded on the occasion of the crisis of the four banks in central Italy and the two banks in the Veneto region?
The close discussion between the Minister of Economy, Pier Carlo Padoan, and the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Ignazio Visco will once again be the highlight of the traditional ceremony to be held in Rome on Tuesday 31 October for World Savings Day, opened as always by the speeches of the president of ACRI, Giuseppe Guzzetti, and by that of ABI, Antonio Patuelli in front of the usual audience of bankers. But this year will not be like the other times and the focus will be mainly on the Governor after his recent and troubled reappointment as head of the Bank of Italy.
Curiosity will not only concern his point of view on the prospects of the world and the Italian economy but above all his analysis on the state of Italian banks and in particular of the Supervision of the Bank of Italy, accused on the occasion of the major crises that emerged in the Italian banking system. The accusation leveled against the Bank of Italy's Supervisory Department is that it often intervened late and badly, partly due to the complexity and changeability of European rules and partly due to its formalistic and baroque conception which does not allow it to intervene promptly. But it is useless to deny that under accusation, in addition to the rules, there are the men who managed the Supervision of the Bank of Italy under the Governorate of Visco, from the head of Supervision Carmelo Barbagallo to the deputy director of the central bank, Fabio Panetta, always a pupil of the non-regreted former Governor Antonio Fazio.
Thinking that a controversial banker like the former President of Banca Popolare di Vicenza, Gianni Zonin, could be the linchpin through which to save Banca Etruria first and then Veneto Banca is the capital error that critics accuse the Bank of Italy of. But even Visco's supporters are asking him to turn the page in the Supervisory Department and this will also be discussed in the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Italian banking system.
It remains to be seen whether the Governor, in addition to defending the work of Via Nazionale, will begin tomorrow to write a new page in his second term.
