The sabotage of the reforms by the high bureaucracy and the professional scammers, of which the State Council and the Tar are the supreme expression, has struck again. Accepting the appeals of some small members of the Popolaru (including the economist Marco Vitale and the director of the Bpm, Pietro Lonardi), the Council of State suspended with a precautionary order with immediate effect a circular implementing the Bank of Italy on the reform of cooperative banks, hindering their transformation into joint stock companies pending a pronouncement on the merits of the matter and a verdict from the Constitutional Court.
It is now a question of understanding what will happen to most of the ten cooperative banks which, by law, have already been transformed into joint-stock companies and to those who, like Banca Popolare di Bari, have convened a meeting in recent days for the 'December 11 to decide the transformation itself into a spa. Let's not forget that most of the largest Popolari are listed on the Stock Exchange and that the act of the Council of State risks creating significant damage to institutions and savers.
The countermoves of the Bank of Italy and the Treasury are expected shortly, but the pronouncement of the Council of State testifies once again how difficult it is to reform the country, of which the reform of the Popolari, awaited for over thirty years, was one of the cornerstones not only in the eyes of the markets and international investors but to secure the Popolari themselves and facilitate their recourse to the capital market.
However, the president of Assopopolari, Corrado Sforza Fogliani, commented: “The ordinances of the Council of State confirm the concerns that Assopopolari has always expressed regarding a delicate reform such as that of cooperative banks. However, the judges are on the road to safeguarding competition at every level and banks that have always been at the service of the territory”.
The intervention of the Council of State refers in particular to the limits on the reimbursements of shareholders who exercise the right of withdrawal and which were designed to protect the financial stability of the Popolari without harming the rights of the shareholders but simply modulating them over time. But now everything comes back into discussion with a timing - on the eve of the referendum - to say the least suspicious.
