Lively controversies continue and hypotheses, even fanciful, follow one another following the approval of the decree on the reform of cooperative credit. The central question remains that of the liberation of reserves in exchange for the payment of a substitute tax equal to 20% of the assets, to avoid entry into the cooperative banking group (the so-called way out). This possibility is currently accessible to about fifteen mutual banks, with assets exceeding 200 million euros, which could try to transform themselves into joint-stock companies or transfer assets and liabilities en bloc to a spa bank to be established or already operational.
Why is it hoped that this system, based on a tax instrument that is moreover penalizing for so much, will be substantially modified in the process of converting the decree into law? Simply because its foundation is not understood. On the one hand there are the criticisms of those who underline the vulnerability, considered unacceptable, to the principles of cooperation, on the other there are those who observe that, by raising a prohibitive barrier to exit, any possibility of choice other than membership is effectively nullified to the cooperative group.
Therefore, during the conversion phase, the reference to the liberation of the reserves should be dropped, which, according to the current legal system, can only remain indivisible, under penalty of substantial changes to the property rights of the cooperative member, an objective which is certainly not among those of the reform. Once the indivisibility of the reserves has been restored, the corrections should concern the size of the aforementioned tax.
This point is linked to the unacceptable motivation of the tax itself, as emerges from the declarations of those who have promoted it to the government (from Il Corriere della Sera 15/2/2016 "Così I modified the reform of the CCBs", interview by Dario Divico to the economist Nicola Rossi).
According to this view, the tax would be necessary to avoid a competitive advantage to those banks which, having the requisites, want to leave the role of credit union, for a profit configuration, entering a new tax regime with respect to the one, more favorable , so far enjoyed.
It escapes because a fiscal instrument should be used which would act on the previous regime, given that this favor does not represent a State donation to the Cooperation, but rather a form of compensation for the lesser possibilities of capital accumulation allowed to the cooperative enterprise, limiting its appetite for risk and, consequently, access to profit maximization opportunities.
These connotations, for all cooperatives represented by the non-contestability of the capital (the reserves are indivisible as they pertain to the cooperation), by the limits on the distribution of profits and on access to the capital market, are even more visible in the world of credit, given the even more restrictive supervisory rules to which the BCCs are subject compared to other types of banks (savings banks, until they remain alive, cooperative banks, spa banks).
Just think of the limits on operations with non-shareholders and territorial jurisdiction, the constraints on the acquisition of shareholdings and on the concentration of risks. If this balance has been successful over time, it is not clear why today those advantages should be penalized, giving back a large part of them, given that, trivially, the conditions for a different risk/return combination could not be restored backwards; and this, among other things, precisely at the expense of those who have been able to perform better than others the task of competing with the profit world, accumulating more than 200 million in assets. The cooperative time machine has not yet been invented and giving up the way out for these reasons would certainly not be an optimal condition.
On the other hand, the path through the transfer of assets (with the original cooperative remaining the parent company of the new banking entity and its members remaining in the same original position, except for the different object of the company) has been successfully followed by many cooperatives of production and consumption, also to create controlled financial subjects, without anyone ever raising questions of competition and asking for the return to the Treasury of sums calculated according to the previous tax regime.
Equality of competition is achieved with the same rules of profit maximization and capital accumulation and by not intervening on situations prior to the corporate transformation.
Basically, it cannot be a tax system that is ambiguous in its aims and exasperated in its extent to manage the exceptions. And this without saying anything about the impact on the capital requirements that are required of a bank by the supervisory rules; it would be committed to recovering the reduction in equity thus produced, assuming risks to a greater extent than any other bank born from its origins as a joint-stock company.
At most, one could examine the possibility of acting on the registration tax which currently weighs on each transferee to the extent of 3% of the assets resulting from the difference between the acquired assets and liabilities. This tax could, exceptionally, be increased by a few points, let's say up to 5/6 per cent.
But the real point of the question would still not be grasped.
The barriers to exiting the configuration based on the cohesion pact, wanted by the decree to strengthen the fragile characteristics of banking cooperation in Italy, must be of a different nature. Dimensional criteria (assets, but even better total assets) can undoubtedly be established by law as necessary conditions, but these can hardly be considered sufficient conditions as well.
As we have already argued in this journal, these conditions must be the result of a project which demonstrates that the exceptions with respect to joining the cooperative group undoubtedly lead to more solid financial situations.
The demonstrative effort of those who want to try other paths will have to be based on coherent and sustainable development strategies, the ability to renew Governance, organizational methods of managing the business and the operating machine. This path can hardly be the prerogative of individual cases, but rather arise from aggregative solutions, from which advantages undoubtedly emerge in terms of allocative and operational efficiency.
The ability to promote investments in technology should not be overlooked, the real condition for affecting the profitability of bank management.
The topic, which is practically ignored in every discussion of remedies for the backwardness of a large part of the Italian banking system, is also relevant for the relaunch of the mutual banks. And it will have to be the Bank of Italy, as the national supervisory authority on minor banking, to interpret these situations, selecting the truly virtuous ones with criteria of severity.
Projects to renew credit and services in favor of the territory and technological projects to adequately assist this modernization process are the two pillars for an independent path with respect to integration into the cooperative group, which still lacks a real renewal program industrial.
In truth, there are few subjects who can give substance to this binomial and therefore be able to merit autonomous ways out.
These are not the issues that a decree-law has to deal with, but taking irreversible steps that limit the degrees of freedom beyond all measure could damage precisely those who have created cooperative banking business models characterized by visible efficiency parameters, moreover not always aligning with the addresses of the movement.
On the other hand, legislative interventions must be asked to be careful that the peculiarities of our reforms do not distance us too much from European cooperative banking, which in many countries appears at this stage inclined to less complex rationalization interventions than those which, with the cooperative group and the cohesion contract, are being prepared for the Italian BCC system.
