When he talks about the Monte dei Paschi, politics - and not only the Democratic Party, which has always had good times and bad times in the oldest Bank in Italy - is not serene, because it knows it has a guilty conscience having done everything, absolutely everything, to squeeze it out like a lemon. Let alone in the middle of the electoral campaign and a few weeks before the political elections in Siena. And in fact, as soon as a window opened for one negotiation between the Government and Unicredit for the possible sale, under certain conditions, of a large part (but not all) of the assets of the ruined Sienese bank to the Milanese group, the competition has begun to see who gets the biggest shot.
The idea of to attack the Draghi Government a few weeks before the political elections in Siena, it is irresistible for many (and not just for those in the opposition), but it will be difficult for propaganda to help track down the best solutions for a bank that has been comatose for years. And it goes without saying that the champions of populism - from the League to the Brothers of Italy and the Five Stars - are, as always, in the front row in the feigned defense of the Mount and in the race for demagoguery, which also seems to infect forces, such as the Democratic Party, who are usually more reasoning.
Asking that there be maximum transparency in the Mef-Unicredit negotiation and that Monte workers are protected – we are talking about 5-6 thousand redundancies – by activating the social safety nets and above all the beneficial bank redundancy fund is obviously sacrosanct. But this is not what is being discussed and which feeds surreal controversies and disarming hypocrisies. The apple of contention, predictably, is the so-called Monte dei Paschi stew in the hypothesis, already overshadowed by Unicredit, that not all the Sienese bank's assets pass to the Milanese group, but only those that the institution led by Andrea Orcel deems interesting and useful for strengthening Unicredit without weighing on the income statement and capital solidity. Which means that Unicredit will advance its offer especially for MPS branches in the Centre-North, but it will hardly be interested in the Monte headquarters and its branches in the South.
It may displease Siena, its workers and the local administrations where the Monte is present, but if you don't want to fall into hypocrisy and the most insipid demagoguery, you have to ask yourself three questions. Inescapable. Bearing in mind that it is the Treasury that is courting Unicredit to conclude the MPS deal and not the other way around because the Milanese bank is not yearning to take on the Monte and has other alternatives available.
Primo: does it matter or is it completely irrelevant that in the recent European stress test MPS was the worst of the main 50 banks of the Old Continent due to its manifest capital weakness? Is it or isn't it a signal that for Monte there is no more time to lose if we don't want to see the default?
For: is it true or not that Unicredit is the only bank that has come forward to take over at least a part of Monte dei Paschi and that to date there are no other offers in the field?
Third: in the undesirable case that the negotiations between Mef and Unicredit do not conclude positively, what would be the alternatives for a bank like Mps which, according to the agreements entered into with Europe, must be privatized within the year and cannot use of state aid? Going to Brussels cap in hand asking for a humiliating extension of the Treasury's exit from MPS capital? Imagine improbable public banking clusters around MPS, obliging once again all taxpayers - as for Alitalia - to open their wallets to save a bank in a pre-bankruptcy state and defying the vetoes of Brussels?
It may also be true that the Mps stew is not heaven but, if the three questions set out above are answered with intellectual honesty, it will be difficult to imagine that there exist – not on the moon, but here and now – more adequate solutions and it will be difficult to deny that still once upon a time the search for the best (but in this case we could say for the worst) risks, as always, being the enemy of the good. Unless an even heavier bill is placed on Pantalone.
