No more alibis. The Council of State rejected the appeals of the Banca Popolare di Sondrio and stated the full legitimacy of the provisions of the Renzi reform on cooperative banks, thus paving the way for the definitive transformation into a joint stock company of the Valtellina bank, the last one that has not yet adapted to the reform.
By eliminating the per capita vote, according to which members vote in meetings ("each member, one vote") regardless of the size of the shareholding, now Popolare di Sondrio, which is also listed on the Stock Exchange, must transform itself into a for shares and becomes contestable. And it is no coincidence that the market senses change and that the title of Pop Sondrio is in Piazza Affari up 84% year-to-date (including 0,74% yesterday), i.e. triple the rise in the sector.
In fact, there is around the corner unipol, which is the first shareholder of Bper and which yesterday rose to 9,01% of the capital of the Valtellina bank of which it already had 6,9% in its pocket after recent purchases on the market. If there are no unforeseen events or other obstructive manoeuvres, it is evident that, once fully transformed into a joint stock company, Popolare di Sondrio is preparing to change its tunic and fully enter the major banking risk which within the year could lead to the creation – via Bper or via Banco Bpm – of the third Italian banking group behind Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit.
The first time there was talk of overcoming the per capita vote in the major cooperative banks by transforming them into joint stock companies was in 97 and it was the then director general of the Treasury, Mario Draghi, who prepared the reform of the TUF (Consolidated Law on Finance) but the parliamentary filibuster brought down the law before it even saw the light. Then it was the turn of the Government of Matteo Renzi, openly supported by the Bank of Italy, to carry through the popular law reform by decree after twenty years of failed attempts in Parliament. Now it took another six years from the reform to unhinge, through the pronouncement of the Council of State, the last resistances of the Popolare di Sondrio and we hope it will be the right time to eliminate corporate closures and make the Valtellinese bank a normal joint stock company like all the other companies that have freely decided to list on the Stock Exchange.
