Ecco il piano Passera:
The board of Italy’s
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena is studying a proposal for a €5bn recapitalisation of the world’s oldest lender presented by veteran banker Corrado Passera with backing from Bob Diamond’s investment vehicle.
The recapitalisation
approach from Mr Passera, the former head of Italy’s
Intesa Sanpaolo and ex-industry minister, represents a challenge to a JPMorgan-led rescue plan that has stalled recently because of scant investor interest.
European regulators have ordered MPS to offload nearly €30bn of bad debts. Senior bankers warn that if neither JPMorgan nor Mr Passera succeed in their rescue attempts, MPS’s creditors could be bailed in by the end of the year, with potentially damaging political and financial consequences.
In
a statement over the weekend, MPS’s board said it had received “a non-binding proposal on a potential capital strengthening of the bank” from Mr Passera.
The board said it had “granted a specific mandate” to chief executive
Marco Morelli, a former JPMorgan and
Bank of America Merrill Lynch banker who also used to work for Mr Passera at Intesa, to investigate the proposal.
Mr Passera’s proposal is the latest dramatic twist in
the fortunes of MPS, which was founded in 1472 and has suffered a precipitous decline in the past decade. A costly acquisition by the Siena-based lender on the cusp of the financial crisis was compounded by derivatives fraud, mismanagement and Italy’s economic stagnation.
It comes as a plan agreed by JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon with reformist prime minister Matteo Renzi before the summer is under review. Investors have baulked at stumping up €5bn in new capital for a bank with a market capitalisation of only €500m, say senior bankers involved in the talks. It has already burnt through the €8bn it raised over the past two years.
Mr Renzi hopes to avoid losses being imposed on the thousands of retail investors that own MPS bonds under EU bank rescue rules ahead of a crucial referendum over constitutional reform on December 4 that analysts think could cost him his job.
The plan proposed by Mr Passera involves raising €5bn in new capital through a €1bn share sale to existing investors and a €2.5bn investment from new long-term backers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plan.
Mr Passera has lined up new investors with Atlas Merchant Capital — the investment vehicle of former Barclays boss Bob Diamond — among those approached, said another person familiar with the proposal.
The funds would be needed to cover €4.6bn of extra provisions from selling €31bn-€32bn of bad loans to a separate vehicle, the person said. The new investors would be offered stakes in both the bad loans vehicle and MPS. Further equity could be raised on the market next year or via a debt-for-equity swap, this person said.
By contrast, JPMorgan is now looking at a revised plan which would involve MPS raising €1bn to €2bn via a debt-for-equity swap launched in November, said people working on the proposal.
Bankers on the deal hope then to launch a capital increase of up to €3bn as early as December 5, the day after Mr Renzi faces the referendum, said a person directly involved in the plan.
Italy’s government and JPMorgan have also sought to bring in an anchor investor and had approached deep-pocketed groups in both Qatar and Dubai as well as private equity investors, say three people familiar with the matter. Those talks have not yet resulted in a deal, say these people.
MPS’s travails have become a bellwether of the problems of Italy’s €4tn banking system which is weighed down by €360bn of soured loans, €200bn of which are classed as gross non-performing loans. Italy’s bank shares have lost a fifth of their value this year. MPS stock is down 85 per cent.
A failure to recapitalise MPS would have systemic consequences, say senior bankers. It risks a knock on effect on recapitalisation of
UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank by assets, which is expected to seek to raise more than €10bn in new capital early next year.
https://www.ft.com/content/5ce00aec-938c-11e6-a80e-bcd69f323a8b
abbiamo un video esclusivo per "Marco" (Morelli?)