Double challenge under the tree. In the month of December, the two ongoing duels in the Italian banking sector reach their most delicate phase: the Bpm shareholders' meeting is scheduled for 21 December with the challenge between the list of Piero Lonardi and that of Piero Giarda who have crossed arms to conquer the supervisory board of the Milanese institute; the meeting for the capital increase of MPS is on the agenda on the 27th on which the top management of the bank, the president Alessandro Profumo and the CEO Fabrizio Viola, and the new dominus of the Mps Foundation, Antonella Mansi, are facing each other with foils.
Both titles are in the spotlight at Piazza Affari: bpm salt by 1,39% and Ps of 0,41% against a Ftse Eb down 0,33%. In Piazza Meda the electoral campaign has begun in these days: yesterday Piero Giarda met the partners in Monza tomorrow Lonardi will instead leave from Foggia to then head to Rome on the 13th, and to Milan on December 17 and 18. In recent days Lonardi, on the occasion of the presentation of his list (Bpm for independence), had warned the shareholders about the consequences of a victory for the competitor Giarda, indicating the risk that the bank could end up in the hands of another group. "'The idea of a merger of Banca Popolare di Milano with other banks as far as our list is concerned has neither head nor tail" Giarda retorted specifying that “it is a pure figment of the imagination, which has no reference to anything that has happened in the past days nor with the program on the list. The idea does not exist”.
For Giarda, Bpm is a bank that can become solid and capable of surviving “with their own means, with their own people and with their own structures”. On the other hand, after the failed wedding with the Bper, the rumors of possible marriages with other banks have never died down, starting with the most popular hypothesis for some time, Banco Popolare. But Giarda wanted to cut the speculation with a gesture as blatant as it was ironic: he wrote the names of the Italian banks on a series of banknotes and improvised a drawing of lots for the bank that "we're going to buy". Nothing Banco, ruled the urn from which the name of Intesa Sanpaolo emerged. “It will take some additional capital increases,” joked Giarda announcing that similar drawings will be held at all stages of the electoral campaign.
Who knows if it doesn't end up with a drawing of lots too in Siena where the shareholders will probably be called to vote on two alternative proposals: that of the top management who proposed carrying out the increase within the first quarter of the year (resolved by the board last November 26) to prevent a delay in capital strengthening (requested by the European Commission to repay the Monti bonds by 2014) could create problems for the bank and that of the Foundation, a shareholder with the relative majority of the bank, which asks to proceed with the increase in the second quarter of 2014 (on which the bank's Board of Directors will have to express during the week). The goal of the new president Antonella Mansi it is in fact having more time to be able to sell bank shares at a reasonable value and thus be able to repay the debt. However, a postponement of the increase by the shareholders' meeting, Sole24Ore points out, would be equivalent to a distrust of the Board of Directors and would push the top management, Profumo and Viola, to resign. According to the banks of the guarantee consortium, Il Sole reports, the step backwards by the top management "is to be considered inevitable". A spokesman from the bank stated that the president and CEO "will work as always in the interest of the bank and its capital strengthening".
