FRANKFURT — Some banks go to the international markets when they need money for a big deal. Monte dei Paschi di Siena, one of Italy’s biggest lenders, tapped its own loyal customers.
“The
bank has always been a gold mine and the pride of the city,” said Paolo
Emilio Falaschi, a lawyer in Siena who represents several aggrieved
clients.
The aftershocks of that strategy have presented European leaders with their first major too-big-to-fail moment, as authorities on Thursday gave the initial greenlight for a bailout of Monte dei Paschi.
Monte
dei Paschi never recovered from its ill-fated and costly deal; the firm
has been marred for years by scandal, management upheaval and hefty losses. Calls for a bailout
have been growing louder over worries that legions of angry
middle-class savers — who bought the bank’s bonds and financed the deal —
would destabilize Italy’s already wobbly government and nourish
far-right parties.
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As
the bank runs low on cash, the Italian government is stepping in to
help, with plans to inject as much as 20 billion euros into Monte dei
Paschi and other troubled lenders. European regulators gave their
preliminary approval to the Monte dei Paschi deal on the condition that
the bank go through an in-depth restructuring and its finances pass
muster.
Much
of the reform instituted after the 2008 financial crisis was intended
to prevent banks from becoming so big and so risky that they could hold
the global economy hostage. Politicians and policy makers didn’t want
taxpayers to be on the hook for the banks’ mistakes.
Under
the new rules, national governments are not supposed to inject fresh
taxpayer money into a bank if it is deemed insolvent. When a bank gets
into financial trouble, shareholders and bondholders, assumed to be
sophisticated investors aware of the risks, are supposed to take the hit
and bear the losses.
The
health of Monte dei Paschi — which will be assessed by the European
Central Bank as a condition of the deal — will be a crucial measure to
ensure the bailout follows the rules. But the finances of Monte dei
Paschi are open to significant interpretation, putting the rescue in a
regulatory gray area.
The central bank said in late December that Monte dei Paschi would need €8.8 billion
to plug a shortfall in its capital. The Italian bank lost €3.4 billion
last year as it had to set aside more reserves for troubled loans, and
it continued to bleed money in the first quarter.
Monte
dei Paschi is the first case in which the European Central Bank has
exercised its oversight role under new bank bailout rules. The central
bank is responsible for determining whether Monte dei Paschi can be
saved and how much capital it needs.
If
authorities stretch the definition of solvency for a midsize Italian
lender, a fraction the size of JPMorgan Chase or Deutsche Bank, the case
could raise questions about whether the world was any safer from a
really big bank failure.
“This
is the first serious test for the European banking union,” said Clemens
Fuest, president of the Ifo Institute, an economic research institute
in Munich.
“If
the bail-in rules are violated without very good reasons,” Mr. Fuest
said, “the credibility of the banking union will be damaged.”
Monte dei Paschi declined to comment.
Monte
dei Paschi’s problems have been festering for nearly a decade. Founded
in 1472 and still based in a fortresslike medieval building, the bank
for centuries was a sleepy regional lender. The local foundation that
owned the bank showered its profit on Siena and the surrounding region,
subsidizing things as diverse as the local professional soccer team and
Siena’s famous Palio horse race.
The
bank’s troubles began in 2008, when it acquired Antonveneta, a small
regional player. The price of €9 billion, all in cash, was considered
alarmingly high.
Stretched,
the bank used a series of dubious transactions to raise money. Among
them was the sale of €2 billion in bonds to customers, employees and
other middle-class savers.
Weakened
by the purchase, Monte dei Paschi was acutely vulnerable to the shocks
that followed the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in
late 2008 and the European debt crisis
in 2010. Prices plunged for the bank’s holdings of Italian government
bonds. The amount of problem loans surged, as Italy’s sputtering economy
hurt small businesses and left many unable to repay their debts.
Monte
dei Paschi managers made the problems worse by trying to conceal
growing losses from shareholders and regulators, in part using
derivatives devised with the help of Japanese bank Nomura and Deutsche
Bank. After the losses were exposed in 2013, the bank needed a €3.9
billion bailout from the Bank of Italy to stay afloat.
A
succession of new top managers tried to fix Monte dei Paschi by pushing
thousands of bank workers into early retirement, selling problem loans
and asking shareholders to put up new capital. The measures were not
enough.
Last
July, stress tests by European bank regulators determined that Monte
dei Paschi’s capital would be wiped out in the event of a severe
economic crisis. No other bank tested fared so poorly.
The bank tried to raise more capital. But the company failed to persuade private investors.
Under the new rules,
Monte dei Paschi’s bondholders are supposed to step unto the breach,
swallowing losses and reducing the bank’s debt. The problem is that many
of the bondholders are middle-class Italians who were told the bonds
were a low-risk way to save.
The crisis comes at a particularly sensitive time. New elections are expected later this year, or next spring.
Leaders
in Rome are worried that forcing small-time investors to take a hit
would make them susceptible to appeals by the populist Five Star
Movement or the right wing Northern League. The Five Star Movement has
organized noisy demonstrations in front of Monte dei Paschi’s
headquarters.
“You
can expect Five Star and the Northern League to play this card,” said
Silvia Merler, an affiliate fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in
Brussels.
Sergio
Burrini, a retired Monte dei Paschi employee who is secretary of group
representing small investors, expressed anger at “a terrible political
and managerial class that did not prevent this mayhem from happening.”
But Mr. Burrini expressed no sympathy for the Five Star Movement.
Local
lawyers in touch with bondholders doubt that their clients would turn
to populist parties. Most of the investors are relatively well-to-do
people unlikely to support such movements, the lawyers said.
The
debate about the bailout has reopened familiar fault lines between
Italy and countries like Germany that insist on strict adherence to the
letter of the law. Early in the process, the German government raised
objections to a bailout.
But
it may be reluctant to put up obstacles now. The government of
Chancellor Angela Merkel faces an election in September, and Germany may
need to save its own troubled institution, the state-owned HSH
Nordbank.
On Thursday, the Finance Ministry in Berlin declined to comment on the decisions by European authorities to approve the bailout.
Ms.
Merler of Bruegel argued that Italy is not violating European rules by
helping Monte dei Paschi. Europe’s bank resolution law allows countries
to provide temporary aid to banks in order to avert a financial crisis,
provided the bank has not already collapsed.
Some
analysts are concerned that Monte dei Paschi’s troubles could spread to
other Italian banks. Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca both
asked for state aid last month, but European regulators may be reluctant
to give them arrangements similar to Monte dei Paschi’s.
While
the details of Monte dei Paschi’s deal are still being finalized,
Italian taxpayers are expected to the bear the brunt of the cost. The
Italian government is expected to kick in €6.6 billion, with the
remaining €2.2 billion of its capital shortfall covered by senior
bondholders. As part of the plan, the ordinary folks who bought bonds
would be compensated in some manner.
The
justification for repaying the small-time investors in full is that
they were victims of false marketing. But critics say consumer fraud
issues should be treated separately from the bailout.
“They
can sue the bank for selling them something they did not want to buy,”
said Mr. Fuest of the Ifo Institute. “I cannot see that financial
stability depends on bailing out all retail investors.”
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