OPINIONI
BY: PIPPA COLE
A return to the stock market for Italy’s fourth-biggest bank
As part of a revival plan, Monte dei Paschi di Siena returned to the stock market on October 25th after ten months away. Shares closed at a hopeful €4.55, but still significantly short of the €6.49 the government paid per share during its bailout in July 2017, one of a number of damaging incidents in the bank’s history.
After failing a stress test in July 2016 and suspending trading last December, the European Commission approved a government supported €8.1bn “precautionary recapitalisation” for the bank, the world’s oldest and Italy’s fourth biggest. With the help of equity conversions, government injections and the disposal of non-performing loans, Monte dei Paschi must get back to its feet by 2021 and return to the private sector. A major restructuring also forms part of the scheme, with the number of branches being cut from 2,000 to 1,400 and staff cuts of 5,500 employees.
Looking ahead to 2021, the key target for the Sienese lender is to drastically reduce its gross non-performing exposure ratio. This figure is the absolute level of a fund’s investments, a measure that indicates total exposure to financial markets and therefore the amount of investment at risk from market fluctuations. Monte dei Paschi is projected to reduce this figure to 12.9% by 2021 from 34.5% in December. Signs of an improvement, yes, but at a ratio still much higher than the European average of 5.1%. The road is still long.
– source: The Economist
Alitalia: Lufthansa and EasyJet submit offers to buy parts of the Italian airline
October 16th marked the end of the offer window for the sale of Alitalia. The Italian airline received seven offers in total, including one a piece from British airline EasyJet and German operator Lufthansa (Ryan Air previously retracted its offer amidst its own cancellation crisis). The airline provider went into administration back in May 2017 when a €2bn rescue plan fell through as staff rejected job and salary cuts. Both EasyJet and Lufthansa have put forward offers for only parts of the existing business, the latter interested in “parts of the global network traffic and European and domestic point-to-point business”, and EasyJet maintaining a hesitant line that a non-transaction outcome could be probable. The destiny of the Italian firm and its 12 thousand employees now rests in the balance until a decision is reached on April 30th 2018 after legal studio Gianni, Origoni, Grippo, Cappelli & Partners have assessed the proposals.
In the meantime, the government has committed to supply a further €300 million in loans (in addition to the €600 million provided since May) to the Italian carrier, to keep it running until a private deal is reached.
– source: Corriere della Sera