It is hard to see how a country whose economy has essentially not grown for two decades is going to solve severe bad debt problems without massive defaults and government bailouts. From Don Quijone at wolfstreet.com:
Even supposedly good debt on banks’ books may end up putrefying.
This week the world’s oldest surviving bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, tried to give itself a new lease of life by bringing in fresh blood at the top, following revelations that the Italian lender’s chief executive, Fabrizio Viola, and former chairman, Alessandro Profumo, are under investigation for alleged false accounting and market manipulation.
But the change of guard did nothing to improve market sentiment or performance. By Friday MPS shares had sunk to their lowest point ever — just 21 precarious cents above zero — and, once again, they had to be halted by Italy’s FTSE MIB.
MPS’s new boss Mario Morelli (formerly of Bank of America-Merryl Lynch, Unicredit and Intesa), faces an insurmountable challenge trying to steady the leaking ship. MPS must raise up to €5 billion as part of an emergency rescue plan to stave off the risk of being bailed in, and consequently wound down or chopped up into little pieces and gobbled up by its rivals.
Given that it would be the bank’s third cash call in as many years, investors are understandably reticent to pour yet more funds into the bottomless pit, Reuters reports:
(The bank’s) 45-billion-euro mountain of bad loans is deterring investors from backing it in its third recapitalization in as many years, according to four leading European fund managers and the investment banking source with knowledge of the matter.
Since the private sector-backed rescue blueprint was announced in late July, hundreds of investors had been sounded out about buying stock but interest has been lukewarm, said the source.
This could be bad news, given that for MPS’ latest rescue plan to have any chance of working, both parts of the plan — Part A and Part B — must succeed.
Part A consists of a €28 billion bad-loan sale for which JP Morgan Chase, Citi and Italian investment bank Mediobanca are already assembling a bridge loan, in return for very handsome fees. Atlante, Italy’s deeply opaque, Luxembourg-based bank rescue fund, has reportedly agreed to buy the so-called mezzanine tranche in Monte dei Paschi’s bad loan securitization.
Apparently demand for heavily discounted, slowly-decomposing bank debt in Italy is high, which is great news considering Italy is purportedly home to roughly a third of all of the bad debt at EU banks. In a perfect sign of our yield-starved times, last week saw around 250 global investors converge on Venice to attend Banca Ifi s SpA’s “Non-performing Loan” conference. That’s twice as many as last year, reports Bloomberg.
In other words, Part A of the rescue plan seems to be coming along nicely — as long as no one asks who will make up the difference between the book value of the bank’s toxic assets and the discount value at which they’re now being sold.
As for Part B of the Plan — MPS’ €5 billion cash call scheduled for the end of this year — it’s going nowhere fast. Twice-bitten, thrice-shy investors are no longer buying the hype. Gennaro Pucci, chief investment officer at London-based investor PVE Capital, said that even if a significant proportion of MPS’ bad loans were “spun off into a special vehicle,” he would not buy more MPS shares out of fear that the bank could suffer further losses from the remaining soured debt.
To continue reading: Italian Banking Crisis Turns into Mission Impossible
