If we were in space it would be called Gargantua: a gigantic black hole that attracts and sucks towards itself anything that gets too close to it. A star that has collapsed under the force of gravity. And we would be in the film Interstellar, in the company of at least Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. Instead we are on the stock exchange, in the company of Alessandro Profumo and Fabrizio Viola (but also with a nice group of decidedly angry small savers), and the black hole is called MPS.
It was once a bank. Now it has collapsed due to the losses largely inherited from the former captain Mussari "slipped" on acquisitions exhibitions and complex games with even more cryptic names (such as the derivative Santorini). Yes, because the abyss in Siena seems to be endless: yesterday the board of directors approved the 2014 accounts with a hole of 5,34 billion (1,43 in 2013) which has practically already eaten up the entire capital increase launched just last summer . The board thus had to increase the new recapitalization to three billion (as a maximum limit, the exact amount could be even lower) from the 2,5 previously decided.
Not to mention the stock market performance: in the last 12 months it has lost about 62% of its value. Of course, the losses were largely expected and can be explained by the clean-up of the balance sheet linked to the ECB's asset quality review which involved all the main European banks and therefore with the value adjustments requested by the Eurotower. At the same time, the bank decided to go further, bringing adjustments to the loan portfolio to 7,82 billion, above the 4,18 imposed by the ECB as an application of the revision to all 129 billion loans in the portfolio, and not just the 73 analyzed by the ECB.
But anyhow: the numbers for the last quarter of the year, announced yesterday on closed exchanges, surprised again on the negative side and today the stock opened down by1,68 % (the Ftse Mib rebounds by 0,35%) and worsened during the morning, after closing yesterday at -1,3%. “It is a complex balance sheet, as can be read from the numbers – Fabrizio Viola commented in Sole24Ore – If you look at the data rationally and not emotionally, you can see how this balance sheet can allow the bank to return, in 2015, to express its ability to be a normal bank”.
MPS MARRIAGE WITHOUT DOWRY
BANCO POPOLARE AGGREGANT POLE
A "normal bank" destined to be a bride with little dowry, in view of a merger that now seems inevitable. "The issue of aggregation remains on the table and everything we are doing we are doing with the perspective of participating in a consolidation operation", added Viola who, in tandem with President Profumo, has been working for some time to put the pieces back together past management and which in recent times has also mended relations with the MPS Foundation (now more moral than substantial reference shareholder).
The maxi cleaning up on credits also concerns another bank that released its accounts yesterday, Banco Popolare, which however is a candidate as an aggregating pole in the banking risk that is about to open (also thanks to the reform of the popular sector). The institute led by Pier Francesco Saviotti in fact closed 2014 with losses of 1,9 billion, also in this case largely linked to the write-downs relating to the Frankfurt exam (which ended last October), three times as many as those recorded in 2013 (606 million).
However, although the losses associated with the ECB were widely known and expected, the results for the fourth quarter here too disappointed the market's expectations (at the start of today the share dropped by 0,65% but recovered by + 2,9 % after the announcement of the agreement on Ukraine, the accounts were released yesterday with the stock market closed). The red was 1,8 billion against less than 700 million estimated by analysts and the operating profit stopped at 149,7 billion from the 298 foreseen by the consensus. In particular, the bank recorded adjustments on loans double compared to what was expected by the consensus, also weighed down by the Ilva dossier which alone weighed for 140 million.
Even for Saviotti, who welcomes the bad bank hypothesis, 2015 will be the turning point in the "return to normality": "The seven years of lean cows are over", he said, hoping that "2015 will be the first a sign of a return to normality with a profitability that is certainly not exciting but still decent". Good return to normal, but let's hope that for the system it doesn't mean too much "business as usual".
