Transformation into a joint stock company for all the 11 major cooperative banks (those with total assets exceeding 8 billion euros), only for the listed cooperative banks or for none. The hearings promoted by the Finance Commission of the Chamber, which is examining the Renzi government decree which obliges the major Popolari to turn into joint-stock companies in 18 months, exceeding the per capita vote, are proposing different or even alternative scenarios.
Last Tuesday the general manager of the Bank of Italy, Salvatore Rossi, ha extensively motivated the full consent of Via Nazionale to the government reform of the cooperative banks, recalling that the transformation into joint stock companies and the abandonment of the per capita vote for the major cooperative banks is made urgent by their passage under the supervision of the ECB and by the need for them to more easily resort to the capital market if their capital situation, already considered weak by the latest stress tests, so requires.
The President of the Antitrust Authority, Giovanni Pitruzzella, while promoting the reform of the Government, however, suggested a variant: obligation to transform into joint stock companies not for all the 11 major Popolari but only for the 7 that have freely decided to list on the Stock Exchange, whose permanence is incompatible with the status of a cooperative society and the armoring of the corporate structure which eliminates any distant semblance of contestability.
On the other hand, the president of Assopopolari, Ettore Caselli, placed himself on the defensive, who in today's hearing in the Chamber rejected the reform arguing that it could open the doors to speculative subjects (ed, but Banca d'Italia and Consob aren't enough to supervise? ) and that in particular the "transformation into a joint stock company should be accompanied by measures aimed at maintaining the current character of an independent public company over time" and not be a "mandatory and unavoidable obligation but only a sanction for the Popolari who do not complete a path evolutionary aimed at recognizing the per capita vote a non-exclusive role and the proportional vote a non-marginal role".
However, Caselli did not explain why most of the large popular companies did not transform into joint stock companies and how the free choice to go on the stock exchange is justified with a corporate structure that is not very transparent and completely in contrast with that of the other companies that are listed and which are obviously spa. He answered the crucial question that the reform raises: in an economic democracy, are the shares of listed companies counted or weighed?
