The Treasury has already prepared its decree for the extremis rescue of Monte dei Paschi with public guarantees on the bonds but, waiting for the ECB Supervisory Authority to confirm or not in the next few hours the rumors about the no extension to January 20 of the times of the recapitalization, the board of directors will try this afternoon to carry out its plan alone with some news.
The hypothesis circulating is that MPS intends to reopen to retail the possibility of converting subordinated bonds into shares in the hands of small savers who, in the first time window, had been blocked by Consob regulations which did not recognize the necessary risk profiles for Mifid purposes. The Monte board is thinking of asking Consob for an exemption by virtue of the Treasury guarantees.
If this were the case, the target of the 5 million euro capital increase would probably not yet be reached but it would be considerably closer and could induce sovereign wealth funds, also on the basis of a government crisis in the process of being solved, to reopen their portfolios by investing in Sienese bank as anchor investor.
