“We are engaged in evaluating possible solutions to cases of crises affecting some medium-large intermediaries, currently grappling with recovery and recovery processes that the difficult economic conditions experienced in recent years have contributed to making even less easy". This was stated by the governor of the Bank of Italy, Ignazio Viscoduring his speech at theassembly of the Abi.
“The difficulties induced by the pandemic are exacerbating pressure on the banking sector, driven, in Italy as elsewhere, to review business models to make them more sustainable and appropriate to the profound changes taking place – added the number one of Via Nazionale – To these challenges intermediaries are also responding through restructuring plans e possible merger operations. We are closely following this process also within the Eurosystem, certainly not to guide its outcome according to pre-established programmes, but to ensure that it leads to more solid intermediaries and, therefore, better able to support the economy and encourage its return on a path of high and lasting growth”.
According to Visco, “it cannot be excluded that they will occur in the near future crisis cases” among medium and small banks: “'In light of the inadequacy of the current system, we have repeatedly stressed the need to identify crisis management mechanisms for non-systemic intermediaries as soon as possible. To this end, it is important to strengthen the intervention capacity of national deposit guarantee schemes, both preventively and in liquidations with the sale of assets or liabilities. In the short term, it is crucial that the European institutions ensure flexibility in the use for smaller banks of the state aid scheme in liquidation which, following the conditions defined by the Commission, has lost the automatic application of the original proposal by the Italian authorities ”.
On the Npl front, Abi's number one, Antonio Patuanelli, he underlined that "for the new impaired and non-performing loans, all the measures that have been useful for reducing the pre-existing ones are needed: the long-awaited so-called bad banks would also be useful".
Furthermore, according to Patuanelli, "Banks must be farsighted about everything, also prepared for the unpredictable, even for a possible 'technological pandemic' against which bank investments for security are huge".
Banks, Patuanelli went on to say, need "legal certainty also in the future" and today "we have one more certainty: the final sentence of the European Court of Justice on state aid in the Tercas case has introduced legal certainty and greater credibility for the European institutions. These are above all our moral satisfactions which have removed misunderstandings and fully revitalized the operation, at lower costs, of bank bailouts with prevention methods. It is appreciable that the Governor of the Bank of Italy has authoritatively stated on bank bailouts that bail-in resolution is not good for small banks non-systemic, for which the intervention of a deposit guarantee fund is better suited to ensure an orderly exit from the market without the occurrence of a disorderly liquidation that would destroy value”.
The Economy Minister also spoke from the same stage, Daniel Franco: "The main trust is to get out of the long stagnation that preceded the pandemic crisis - Economic policy will remain expansive to bring GDP not only to the 2019 level", but also beyond the pre-pandemic values. This orientation "was also confirmed by the European Commission - added the number one of the Treasury - which extended the suspension of the application of the stability and growth pact to 2022 as well. With the strengthening of the recovery, economic policy will gradually have to become more selective".
As for the role of banks, Franco recalled that facilitated access to mortgages for young people represents a "step taken to facilitate their entry into economic and social life: it is one of the challenges for our country and on this, obviously, we count on the active role of the banks for the success of the measure”.
Finally, on GDP, the minister said that the Def "had estimated 2021% growth in 4,5: at the time it was one of the most optimistic forecasts", but now, after the positive data on the first and second quarters , “the recovery of GDP equal to or greater than 5% appears to be achievable today, as well as the return to the pre-crisis level of GDP by the third quarter of 2022”.
The unions also intervened on banks and crises, emphasizing that "industrial relations in the banking sector offered an excellent test in the most difficult moment of the pandemic", declared the general secretary of First Cisl Riccardo Colombani, underlining that, once the crisis "it is appropriate to implement the digital control room to manage innovation, which must not be used as a fig leaf to cover new staff cuts".
