Once again the dullness of the ECB supervision, already slammed in the summer by President Mario Draghi, risks complicating rather than solving banking emergencies, as in the Italian case of the sale of the Good Banks, for which he is setting unsustainable conditions that risk ruining the entire operation, placing 1,5 billion in losses to the major banks.
It is no coincidence that Salvatore Rossi, the General Manager of the Bank of Italy, who is also the seller of the Good Banks, commented yesterday that "it is a complex issue, which can affect the country's financial stability" and that, precisely for this reason, "The Bank of Italy is careful that hypotheses of contagion are not aired", but he recalled that there are different tools and different players in the field to resolve the case.
Around you, l'Ubi confirmed its purchase offer for 3 of the 4 Good banks in resolution, i.e. for Banca Etruria, Banca delle Marche and Carichieti (at stake for now only Cariferrara remains, for which there are no offers) but on very demanding bases, i.e.: calculate a billion euro of negative goodwill, discount tax credits for 400 million, adopt risk assessment models different from those of the past (as the ECB claims instead, which in fact claims a higher capital endowment) and take over the 3 banks in resolution cleaned up of problem loans (3,4 billion net).
In essence Ubi, which was the subject of a discreet moral suasion of Via Nazionale, it is indeed willing to take over at least 3 of the 4 Good banks but at an almost symbolic price and in any case very low which, in the worst case scenario, involves them only a limited capital increase. Roughly but effectively, the president of Ubi, Andrea Moltrasio, had warned in recent days that the bank's goal is to create added value and not to perform charitable acts.
This is why, at the summit held on Monday at the Treasury with the Bank of Italy and the world of credit, the hypothesis emerged that to take over the NPLs of the Good banks take the field the Atlante fund and other specialized funds. An operation that could facilitate the sale of the Good banks, for which the European Commission is eager (in contrast to the ECB Supervision, whose intransigence risks prolonging the times), but the road remains uphill and nervousness spreads among the big banks, who fear having to pay out more money.
But that the Good banks and the Mps case were, together with the capital increase of Unicredit and the difficult relaunch of the Veneto banks, the thorns of the autumn of the Italian banks had been understood for some time. If anything, the crisis of Deutsche Bank and Commerz have had the effect of making the whole picture of the banks of the Old Continent more worrying.
