The Bank of Italy recommends that Italian banks be "very cautious" on dividends. The General Manager of Via Nazionale, Luigi Federico Signorini, has chosen the Cagliari Congress of Banking Foundations to issue a clear warning. And it is no coincidence that he chose the audience of the Foundations to talk about it. For two reasons: firstly because the Foundations, by virtue of their substantial bank holdings, are among the major recipients of dividends, thanks to which they finance their activity of providing support to the weakest areas of the country; secondly because yesterday, the Foundations themselves, sniffing the wind, had put their hands forward, arguing that if the coupon stop as happened with the pandemic, they took steps to deal with the situation and not interrupt disbursements.
Bank of Italy: attention to dividends but not to generalized measures
Signorini dedicated the final part of his speech in Cagliari to dividends. Here are his words: “The global context suggests much caution: it is therefore necessary to keep the attention of both the intermediaries and the supervisory authorities high on elements such as the correct accounting and prudential classification, the provisioning and distribution policies”. Then, however, Signorini partially reassured the audience by saying that "for the moment it is not necessary to resort again to generalized measures by supervisors and regulators, such as those that were put in place after the outbreak of the pandemic" with the temporary stop and then the staggering of the coupons.
“As useful as they were in the past – Signorini specified -, today they would introduce elements of opaqueness into bank balance sheets, at a time when maximum transparency can instead contribute to the reduction of uncertainty. In any case, the supervisory authorities will evaluate the evolution of the economic and financial conditions and remain ready to intervene if the situation requires it"
