The possibility of a Greek default cannot be excluded. The freeze for Athens comes from the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who in an interview with WSJ and Les Echos, did not rule out the possibility of a default by Greece. The negotiations for the release of the last tranche of loans have stalled and without an agreement with the creditors, the Greek government announced, it will not be possible to repay the debt to the IMF on 5 June. In the middle of the day, however, EU sources indicated that "things are moving" in the negotiations, specifying that the Greek delegation has put on the table proposals that the Commission considers "very concrete" concerning the simplification of VAT (to increase income), pensions and also the labor market.
The euro retreated against the dollar and lost 0,65% to 1,1078. Luckily there is the ECB Mario Draghi. In fact, the stock lists limited the nervousness and closed overall in positive territory still on the impetus of the intervention of Benoit Coeuré, the member of the ECB in charge of market operations, who announced that Frankfurt intends to increase purchases on the markets between May and June to compensate for the liquidity shortage. It is the response to the bond crisis that the markets were expecting. Piazza Affari rises by 0,25%, London by 0,17%, Paris by 0,31%. Frankfurt is more uncertain, slipping by 0,04%. The Btp-Bund spread is 121 basis points, according to Bloomberg data, with the Italian ten-year yield at 1,81% and the German one at 0,6%. The ten-year bonus yields 1,75%.
Weak Wall Street after yesterday's record with the Dow Jones losing 0,08%, the Nasdaq 0,07% and the S&P500 0,14% today. The markets are eyeing the Fed minutes that will be released this evening, at 20 pm Italian time, and the indications on the timing of the interest rate hike. In terms of macroeconomic data, requests for US mortgages fell by 1,5% in the last week to 406,5 points. WTI oil rose by 1,57% to 58,9 dollars.
Meanwhile, the US authorities have ordered some of the major global banks (including JP Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland) fines for a total of 5,7 billion dollars: it was a plea deal given that four of these institutes decided to settle the lawsuit by acknowledging that they were guilty of the charges of forex exchange rate manipulation.
The banking sector in Italy, on the other hand, was today the subject of the attention of the rating agency Fitch which cut the rating of four Italian banks, in the wake of the review of global sovereign support: Monte dei Paschi to B- from BBB, Banco Popolare to BB from BBB, Bper to BB from BB+ and Carige to B from BB. On the Stock Exchange, Mps, the worst stock of the Ftse Mib -6,52%, is losing ground, hit by the downgrade of Fitch and waiting for the capital increase. The other major banks showed positive results, with the exception of Banca Carige which lost 3,17%.
The agriculture minister Padoan confirmed today that a bad bank is being studied but only for solvent banks: "I confirm that among the possible initiatives there is also the formation of a vehicle for the purchase of non-performing loans", with "a voluntary system, only for banks solvents, to facilitate the formation of a market for bad debts". Among the worst stocks of the Ftse Mib, Azimut -5,01%, Autogrill -2,25%, Snam -1,61% and Unipolsai -1,2%.
Among the best titles of the Ftse Eb, Stm +2,12%, Exor +2,01%, Enel +1,43%, Tod's +1,26% which benefits from the positive opinion of analysts, FCA +11,21%. Telecom Italia +0,89% on the day of the meeting, during which CEO Marco Patuano defended the choice not to distribute the dividend. Telecom Italy in fact, it deemed it appropriate not to distribute a coupon in 2014 in order to maintain a high level of liquidity which attracted higher ratings from the rating agencies. "We have not paid for our stock options with the company's liquidity," said Patuano, replying to a shareholder who pointed his finger at the decision not to pay the dividend, despite the high liquidity of the group.
Mediaset +0,56% despite the chaos over TV rights. Yesterday the Antitrust opened an investigation against Mediaset itself, Sky Italia, Infront Italy and the Serie A National Professional League on the assignment of television rights for the football championship in the three-year period 2015-2018, with the aim to verify whether sharing agreements have taken place between Sky and Mediaset. Finally, Bio Due today landed on the AIM with a leap of 35,77%.
