"Close to the territory” has always been the imperative of the banking industry parties, Abi in the lead, of the banking foundations and of the cooperative movements. An imperative that not only hindered the reform and restructuring of the Italian banking system, inherited from a closed and largely pre-industrial economy, but it has also caused the most dramatic failures, as demonstrated by the case of Popular Bank of Bari. Add that the same imperative from always hinders the transformation of cooperative banks into joint-stock companies, savings banks and cooperative credit banks.
There is nothing surprising if the "proximity to the territory" with the development of business has turned into “friendship” with the territory and in analogous friendship with borrowers of funds that would not have exceeded the minimum requirements of entrepreneurial and patrimonial reliability. The refusal of many credit institutions, such as Popolare di Bari, to adopt the legal status of a joint-stock company underlies the desire to maintain less transparent governance arrangements and more favorable to compromise with the wishes of incompetent entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs colluded with indecipherable interests and with territorial politics.
It should therefore come as no surprise that many political parties, with Grillini in the lead, are hoping for the establishment of one public bank for the South which should be born on the ashes of the popular bank of Bari also to guarantee the "presence on the territory" inherited from the defunct popular bank. They would thus turn green again the glories and the nefarious of the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno.
It would be better for the government, educated by the burning experience of the people of Bari, to adopt some measures that would impose:
- the immediate adoption of the as the spa to all credit institutions still reluctant like the BCC-Cooperative Credit Banks and the still resistant People's Banks;
- imposed the adoption of minimum assets such as to favor the aggregation and dimensional growth of smaller credit institutions reasonably more exposed to counterparty, operational and procedural risk in the disbursement of credit;
- eliminate from consolidated banking and financial texts the special rules for credit institutions which limit their contestability closing in non-scalable ownership and governance structures inefficient in the provision of credit.
Finally, in the case of Banca Popolare di Bari, for the present and future respect of Italian taxpayers, after having carried out the rescue and the necessary adoption of the guise of the spa, offer it, with an initial public offer of sale, to private investors exceeding the 30 per cent threshold. This would make it possible to generate revenues to be allocated to public debt reduction. The "proximity to the territory" would suffer, but the exercise of credit to be disbursed according to the needs of the territory and not according to relational conveniences would gain.
