{"id":22022,"date":"2016-10-16T18:34:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T23:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22022"},"modified":"2016-10-16T18:34:29","modified_gmt":"2016-10-16T23:34:29","slug":"why-italys-banking-crisis-is-spiraling-to-heck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22022","title":{"rendered":"Why Italy\u2019s Banking Crisis is Spiraling to Heck"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2016\/10\/16\/italy-banking-crisis-bad-debt-still-spiraling-to-heck\/\">Why Italy\u2019s Banking Crisis is Spiraling to Heck<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"entry-meta\"><strong>\u20ac4.8 billion window-dressing to cover\u00a0a\u00a0growing \u20ac360 billion hole<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>Things have got so serious in Italy that the only two things propping up the country\u2019s crumbling banking sector \u2014 apart from the last few remaining crumbs of public faith in the system \u2014 are two inadequately capitalized bad bank funds, Atlante I and the imaginatively named Atlante II.<\/p>\n<p>Both funds are operated by a deeply opaque Luxembourg-based private firm called Quaestio SGR. The firm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Quaestio Holding S.A, which is itself jointly owned by a bizarre mishmash of organizations, including Fondazione Cariplo (37.65%), an influential \u201ccharitable\u201d banking foundation; Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forl\u00ec (6.75%), a regional savings bank; Cassa Italiana di Previdenza e Assistenza dei Geometri liberi professionisti (18%), a bank for professional freelance surveyors (no, seriously); Locke S.r.l. (22%), an obscure Milan-based holding company; and\u00a0<a title=\"Salesians of Don Bosco\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Salesians_of_Don_Bosco\">Direzione Generale Opere Don Bosco<\/a>\u00a0(15.60%), a Roman Catholic religious institute. No surprises there.<\/p>\n<p>[Hat tip to regular WOLF STREET reader and commenter MC for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2016\/09\/17\/italian-banking-crisis-nonperforming-loans-mission-impossible\/\">pointing out<\/a>\u00a0some of the peculiarities of Italy\u2019s two bad banks]Atlante I\u2019s funds are largely privately sourced, coming primarily from Italy\u2019s largest banks. The two biggest banks, Unicredit and Intesa San Paolo,both pledged around a billion euros a piece. A further \u20ac500 million was provided by a gaggle of smaller banks and another \u20ac500 million was pledged by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP for short), an almost wholly state-owned financial institution. With a little extra help from certain foreign investors, Atlante was able to claw together some \u20ac4.8 billion \u2014 to help solve a \u20ac360 bad-debt problem.<\/p>\n<p>So far, \u20ac1.5 billion of those funds have been used to sub-underwrite the capital expansion and failed IPO of Banco Popolare di Vicenza.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why Italy\u2019s Banking Crisis is Spiraling to Heck \u20ac4.8 billion window-dressing to cover\u00a0a\u00a0growing \u20ac360 billion hole Things have got so serious in Italy that the only two things propping up the country\u2019s crumbling banking sector \u2014 apart from the last few remaining crumbs of public faith in the system \u2014 are two inadequately capitalized bad [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2014,5660,1464,14473,4255],"class_list":["post-22022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-banking-crisis","tag-don-quijones","tag-italy","tag-quaestio-sgr","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22024,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22022\/revisions\/22024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}