Italy’s New Government Eats Its Words, Joins Bank Bailout Club
Well, that didn’t take long. And whatever happened to the Eurozone’s new bail-in rule?
Italy’s government, in its eighth month in power, has already bailed out a bankrupt bank, mid-sized Banca Carige, with public funds. If approved by European Commission and the ECB, it will be the fourth Italian bank rescue in just over two years. As Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore points out, Italy’s populist government has adopted virtually the exact same playbook to save Carige that was used by its predecessor in the previous three resolutions:
The draft of the new Carige decree is a carbon copy of the one used by the Gentiloni Government for the bailouts of Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), BPVI and Veneto Banca — identical in every detail from the rules on state guarantees to the mechanisms adopted…
It took just eight minutes for Italy’s coalition partners, Five Star and the League, to renege on their flagship promise never to bailout a bank, reports Bloomberg. The new decree will allow the government to guarantee Carige bonds up to a maximum value of €3 billion, making it easier for the lender to retain access to the funding market. The government also wants the option, if necessary, to recapitalize the bank by injecting as much as €1 billion into its coffers despite having lambasted the previous government for doing the exact same thing with MPS.
It’s not yet clear whether the proposed rescue of Carige will contravene EU state-aid rules, which are supposed to impose strict conditions on the “precautionary recapitalization” envisaged by the government. Carige is already under the administration of ECB-appointed administrators after failing to agree to a €400 million capital increase at the end of last year. So if there are any issues it should be easy for European Commission or the ECB to stop the bailout dead in its tracks.
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