Dear Editor,
I usually don't respond to criticism. I didn't do it, for example, when Nicola Rossi formulated his observations in my first speech on the cooperative credit reform as outlined by the government decree ("Il Foglio", 21 February 2016). I didn't do it when Giuliano Ferrara addressed insults to the "Maco del Corriere", but I invited him to present the book in Rome, and he accepted. But sometimes you have to. And to the article that Giampaolo Galli dedicates to me on Firstonline, I can't help but reserve a few thoughts that I ask you to kindly host.
First of all, there are questions of style. From a liberal economist like Galli I would have expected a word on the decision of "Unità" not to publish my open (and already agreed) letter to Undersecretary Luca Lotti fearing lawsuits from Lotti himself and from the BCC of Cambiano: the "big article" of the "Fact", from which Galli himself starts, that letter was. Firstonline visitors who have time to waste, i.e. to devote to reading the "big article" (they can also find it on my website, Vadoalmassimo.it), will decide whether it is the text of a "serial and urban opponent" or analysis of the impact of a law, the facilitated way out towards the capitalist bank for the "large" CCBs, a law which, in the Senate, has been criticized not only by the writer but also, among others, by the ex president of the Confcooperative, Luigi Marino. We come now to the substance.
Anyone who reads the government decree as revised by the Chamber will discover that there is no provision for the establishment of a single cooperative banking group headed by a holding company in the form of a joint stock company If a certain number of BCCs are able to give a holding company assets that capitalize it to the tune of one billion, there may be two or even more than two cooperative banking groups. We can discuss whether that makes sense, and to me it makes little sense. But this possibility remains and represents the most serious way out of the Federcasse world. To take it, you need credibility and leadership, solid balance sheets and earning capacity. We will see.
Turning directly or indirectly into a joint-stock company, on the other hand, represents a second form of way out. Which I do not share in the root.
The direct transformation of the BCC into SpA, envisaged by the text approved by the council of ministers on indications from Palazzo Chigi to correct the original text agreed by the MEF, the Bank of Italy and Federcasse, would have allowed the current shareholders to appropriate the indivisible reserves, accumulated in tax exemption from previous generations of members. An undue appropriation, given that the old shareholders have always negotiated the shares of their CCBs at nominal value, not having ownership of the indivisible reserves. Galli confuses past and future generations a bit, but he is right when he recalls the trade-off between mutual exchange and tax rebates which underlies the Basevi law on cooperation. Trade off that has been clear to me since at least 1981, and that is from when I started the journalistic activity in that wonderful cooperative that edited the newspaper "Bresciaoggi". Do you remember, dear Franco? You were there too. With budding masters of economic information such as Elia Zamboni and Odoardo Rizzotti! What a band of happy and unknown journalists, Garcia Marquez would have said!
Moreover, the appropriation did not become less undue by paying an extraordinary tax of 20% of the indivisible reserves. Both because 20% is not enough to repay the tax favor (IRES and its progenitors have not always been as low as they are now, the lack of tax revenues have led to the issue of public debt), and because, strictly speaking, the reserve indivisible belongs to the mutual funds for the promotion of cooperation which leave it in use by the cooperative until the same work and take it back, for whatever remains, when the company expires. The Chamber was right to cancel this form of way out. It did less good to leave standing the other form of way out not from the main cooperative group but from the cooperative banking enterprise through the transfer of credit activities to an existing SpA or to a new SpA, provided both hold a banking licence.
On this front, dear director, I'm in good company: the Bank of Italy had already rejected a similar solution for popular banks; the jurist Paolo Ferro Luzzi underlines how the BCCs are not mere cooperatives, but cooperative banking enterprises, thereby saying that, when they ceased their original activity, they would lose their specific mutualist connotation, and therefore would have to be liquidated (Ferro Luzzi lo wrote in 2000). But beyond the questions of principle I also pose the problem, not secondary for a legislator, of the effectiveness of the law. Galli complains that I'm only doing it now. He's sorry to say that's not true. See the aforementioned article in the "Foglio". But, please, can a senator no longer speak when the decree passes to the Senate? Orally, however, I had already anticipated my opinion to the rapporteur, Giovanni Sanga, and to Davide Zoggia, who had telephoned me and who then made their decisions. Galli didn't do it. And it's certainly not a fault. But don't be surprised if I express the doubt that the way out, deriving from his and Zoggia's amendment, does little work because, in all probability, it would force the BCCs that took advantage of it to carry out onerous and inconvenient recapitalizations for the shareholders. I do the accounts in hand, putting everyone, starting with my opponent, in the best conditions to contradict me with more credible numbers, without resorting to political jargon.
Of course, I don't analyze all the BCCs with assets over 200 million, and therefore theoretically eligible for the exit route, as Galli claims. And of course! I should have written 14 "large articles", a punishment for the reader. Better to focus on the real candidates for the way out. And so, after having said a few words about the Cassa Padana in the Brescian edition of the Corriere, I spoke about the BCC of Cambiano. Why exactly the Cambiano? Because she will be one of the very few to try and because her consultant, Nicola Rossi, boasted in the "Corriere" of having inspired the way out that Galli defends. I turned to Lotti because the newspapers write that he took care of the way out and no reporter has received a text message from Palazzo Chigi. The fact that Lotti is silent opens up a question of accountability if anything. But these days…
Rules that work poorly or poorly, dear director, are badly made rules. And this, in my opinion, is, as in the end Galli himself fears when he gets angry over the 20% "tax". Which "tax", again for the sake of precision, in the decree is not called a tax or tax but a payment precisely because it does not have a consideration, like extraordinary or substitute taxes, but is a simple levy, discriminatory in my opinion, which weighs on a category of enterprises for transactions that other categories of enterprises carry out without levies. This payment is also useful for those who want to empty the facilitated way out from within (may the "Bersani-like Zoggia" have been a bit smart?), it is not for those who defend it (like Galli). In any case, this payment was not added by the Chamber but was already present in the text approved by the Council of Ministers. Galli read better….
For this reason, in the end, I voted for confidence in the Senate. Because the cooperative credit reform (a major and dutiful operation) will not be thrown into crisis by a probably ineffective way out. A stain – as Marino defined it – doesn't oblige you to throw the dress away. But that the stain exists, it can be well said.
