There is no peace for the Banca Popolare di Vicenza and for the banking empire of the president and father-master Gianni Zonin. As was to be expected, the managing director and general manager of the bank, Samuele Sorato, 54, resigned his mandate before the board of directors and resigned from both positions. The bank's official press release speaks of a "consensual resolution" but the disagreement between Sorato and Zonin had been going on for some time.
The top management of the Popolare di Vicenza, which is responsible for inspections by Consob and the ECB, has for now transferred Sorato's powers to the bank's Executive Committee pending the appointment of a successor who could be seventy-year-old Divo Gronchi for the third time.
The crisis situation at the top of the Vicenza bank perhaps definitively distances the idea of marriage with Veneto Banca.
Just today, after the board meeting of Popolare di Vicenza, the president of the Veneto Banca Shareholders' Association, Giovanni Schiavon, former president of the Court of Treviso, declared that "the many perplexities, which emerged also in the last meeting of Veneto Banca, regarding the breezy merger with the Popolare di Vicenza were not exactly wrong, as the very recent events regarding the tensions at the top of the governance of that institution and the persistent simultaneous inspection by Consob and the ECB" in Vicenza seem to confirm.
Schiavon, on the other hand, advocates another solution for Veneto Banca: a stand-alone project with the active contribution of institutional investors in the area” which will strengthen the autonomy of the Montebelluna bank. The battle continues.
