Two weeks after the first, and biggest, European bank bail-in took place under the relatively new European bank resolution mechanism, the EBRD, when Spain’s Banco Popular wiped out the holders of its most risky securities, including equity and AT bonds, and then selling what was left of the bank to Santander for €1 – a process that took place without a glitch – Italy may have just killed any hope of a European banking union, when the bailout of two small banks made a “mockery” of Europe’s new regulation.
Late on Sunday, Italy passed a decree that will effectively sell the good part of the two banks to Intesa, Italy’s second-largest and best-capitalized bank. Intesa said last week that it would be willing to buy the best assets for a token price of €1 as long as the government assumed responsibility for liquidating the banks’ large portfolio of sour loans. As a result, Italy said it would commit as much as €17 billion in taxpayer funds to clean up the two failed “Veneto” banks in one of Italy’s wealthiest regions and support the takeover of their good assets by Intesa Sanpaolo SpA for a token amount. After an emergency cabinet meeting on Sunday, Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said the Italian government will provide Milan-based Intesa with about €5.2 billion euros to allow it to take on Banca Popolare di Vicenza SpA and Veneto Banca SpA assets without hurting capital ratios, The European Commission, in a separate statement, said it approved the plan for the two banks and that it is in-line with state-aid rules.
Unlike the Banco Popular bail-in by Santander, however, Intesa would only take on the good assets. PM Gentiloni said the lenders will be split into good and bad banks and that the firms, with taxpayers on the hook for the bad banks. The process was rushed to allow the failed banks to reopen on Monday and avoid a depositor panic and bank run. The intervention is necessary because depositors and savers were at risk, Gentiloni said. The northern region where they operate “is one of the most important for our economy, above all for small- and medium-size businesses.â€
In addition to the €5.2bn handed to Intesa, an additional €12bn will be available to cover potential further losses at the bad banks, Padoan said, while the Italian Treasury estimates the fair value of the losses at about €400 million. The final number will be far greater.
Just like in the case of Banco Popular, the government tried for months to find a way to keep the banks afloat, including an appeal to wealthy businessmen in the region to contribute to a rescue according to Bloomberg. Those efforts ended on Friday when the European Central Bank said the two banks are failing or were likely to fail and turned the matter over to the Single Resolution Board in Brussels for disposal. The SRB, in turn, passed the issue back to Italian authorities to allow the banks to be wound down under local law. In the subsequent 48 hours, culminating with today’s announcement by the prime minister, which also required a change to Italy’s bankruptcy law, Italy rushed to assemble the measures to carry out the plan because a local regulatory framework was required to allow the banks to open on Monday.
Ultimately, the plan unveiled by the government is virtually the same as that suggested earlier in the week by Intesa, which “offered” to take on the assets of the two Veneto banks on the condition that it wouldn’t harm its own capital and dividends, in some ways mirroring an FDIC-backed bailout of a US bank, in which a safe lender assumes all the deposits and loans, which the insurer plugs the capital shortfall. Only in this case, the NPLs are spun off into a separate entity: Intesa’s proposal excluded soured debt, higher-risk performing loans and subordinated bonds, along with shareholdings and other “legal relationships.†A purchase would only move forward if it didn’t lower Intesa’s common equity Tier 1 ratio, the bank said.
