Here’s how M5s and Bivona made a splash on Mps
Facts and insights on Mps between finance, politics and courts. Emanuela Rossi's article
For days we have been talking about Montepaschi: for the agreement with the homonymous Foundation on the causes but above all for the start of the new phase of the banking risk thanks to the interest on the part of Unicredit to marry in Siena, subject to a luxurious prenuptial agreement with the father of the bride, the Treasury.
However, La Rocca has been present for years on the economic-financial pages of newspapers and also in the judicial ones due to the scandal of derivatives and the bomb of legal compensation, the sword of Damocles that in fact Andrea Orcel wants to keep well away from the thalamus.
For some years, then, the vicissitudes of Mps have been intertwined with the attentions of two apparently distant subjects: the Five Star Movement and the financier Giuseppe Bivona, partner and co-founder of Bluebell Partners since March 2021 , but also – as you can read on his LinkedIn profile – former Goldman Sachs, former Lehman Brothers and before that for 10 years at Morgan Stanley.
United by one goal: to keep individuals away from the bank.
THE M5S NIET TO PRIVATIZATION
Since it has been in government – first with Giuseppe Conte and then with Mario Draghi – the Five Star Movement has always spoken out against the privatization of Siena.
Upon arrival at Palazzo Chigi of the former ECB number one, the M5S senators in the Budget and Finance Committee said they intended to present "as soon as possible" to Draghi a project to "create a person in Italy that exceeds the role limits of the Cassa deposits and loans, which is able to directly transmit economic stimuli to the world of SMEs, which is collateral and propulsive with respect to the Recovery Fund ”. A project that would revolve around Montepaschi and Mediocredito Centrale, together with the investee Banca Popolare di Bari. "We intend to stimulate the implementation of the plan by proposing to field the significant wealth of professionalism and territorial branching of Monte dei Paschi – they explained -, which could become one of the founding elements of the new Italian BPI together with Mcc (Mediocredito Centrale) and its subsidiary Banca Popolare di Bari ”.
But already in the Government Agreement signed by the Movement together with the Lega per il Conte I, the entry Mps read: "The shareholder state must redefine the mission and objectives of the credit institution from a service perspective".
THE BANKS OF THE M5S IN BIVONA
In this Sienese "mission" the Movement found an (indirect?) Ally precisely in Bivona which, again at the time of the first Conte government, had sent a letter to the then Minister of Economy, Giovanni Tria, and to the vice presidents of the Council, Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini. "Today, for the first time in the history of the bank, the Ministry of Economy has the possibility of appointing a summit that is not designated by local or central governments of the Democratic Party matrix" wrote the founder of Bluebell Partners who – according to Affari & Finanza – in particular had intertwined relations with Carlo Sibilia, at the time undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior. A few months earlier Bivona had already written to Tria on the occasion of the appointment of the new director general of the Mef in place of Vincenzo La Via so that the minister would not indicate Alessandro Rivera, head of the banking and financial system of the Ministry of Economy. However, I recommend that the manager of Via XX Settembre did not follow.
With Mario Draghi at Palazzo Chig i, and in view of the Montepaschi assembly, scheduled for April 6, this time Bivona addressed the new executive guide with a copy that he also sent to Carla Ruocco ( M5S), president of the parliamentary commission of inquiry on the banking and financial system, to Elio Lannutti, senator of the mixed group and former M5S, member of the parliamentary commission of inquiry on the banking and financial system and also of the permanent finance and treasury commission, and to Adolfo Urso, senator of FdI and current president of Copasir.
The substance was simple: the former Eurotower leader had to make sure that Via XX Settembre, majority shareholder of the bank at the moment with 64%, voted in favor of his proposal for a liability action against former directors Alessandro Profumo and Fabrizio Viola.
But Bivona and the Movement were also united by another "battle", the one against the president of Unicredit, and former head of the Mef Pier Carlo Padoan , minister just when Mps was nationalized. Bluebell's partner wrote a letter to the credit institution's board of auditors highlighting the position of the former PD MP, "a politically exposed person" guilty of "omitted information on the bank's website, including failure to disclose his links politicians with the Democratic Party and his election to the Chamber of Deputies in the Siena district ”.
An aversion – even political – reaffirmed a few days ago, on July 28, when Bivona wrote on his Twitter profile: "If the Sienese vote for Enrico Letta (on the recommendation of Renzi) for the seat left vacant by that other genius of Padoan, then it will mean that the MPS disaster (past, present and above all near future) I went to look for it! ”.
The side of the Movement had arrived on time with an interpellation by a group of Grillini senators led by Elio Lannutti to the Minister of Economy and Finance, Daniele Franco. In the document, they asked the board of MPS to "integrate without delay the agenda of the assembly of 6 April with the request for social responsibility action against" Profumo and Viola in order to shed full light on "a black hole of about 60 billion euros, which the shareholder Ministry of Economy and Finance would like to offer as a gift to Unicredit, cleared of about 13.5 billion euros of legal disputes, Npls sold to Amco, capital increase and an endowment of taxes deferred Dta ". Then a jab at Padoan, "former Minister of the Economy and former deputy of the Democratic Party elected in Siena thanks to an ad hoc rule on the criteria of bank integrity, which prevented moving in real time from Parliament to the top of a credit institution".
Therefore, Franco was asked if "he is informed about the very serious and repeated conduct of the MPS board, aimed at preventing a dutiful action of responsibility towards Fabrizio Viola and Alessandro Profumo, sentenced in first instance by the Court of Milan to 6 years of imprisonment and to disqualification from public offices for 5 years, for the offenses of stock manipulation and false corporate communications in the line of inquiry relating to the accounting as BTP of the derivatives stipulated by the Sienese bank with Nomura and Deutsche Bank ".
In addition, the head of the Mef was asked if the department wanted to continue with the "sale-gift of Mps to Unicredit by the former minister Padoan, or to honor the promise to set up a public investment bank, fielding the significant territorial branching heritage" thus to make Monte “an important BPI (Italian public bank) together with Mediocredito centrale and its investee Banca Popolare di Bari”.
THE CAUSE OF THE AKUEL FUND (OF WHICH BIVONA IS A CONSULTANT)
There is always Bivona around the latest events at Rocca Salimbeni or the rejection of the request for compensation for damages, amounting to 450 million euros, by the Akuel fund . The English fund – of which the financier of Bluebell partners is a consultant – accused Montepaschi of having provided misleading information regarding the capital increases of 2014 and 2015. The Milan business court, however, found that the information provided by Siena did not caused “market disorientation”: it was “still social information”, “information whose accounting content was correct, having not been questioned here, and information provided at the suggestion of the supervisory authorities themselves”. The ruling notes that "the proforma prospectuses conveyed an accounting information on a hypothetical but possible situation that the reasonable investor should have taken into consideration" and even more so a professional investor who wanted to "found their conscious investment decisions, despite the incorrect classification of open balances, and this even if the circumstance of the failure to purchase the underlying securities had not yet been disclosed ".
For the Akuel fund, in addition to the rejected damage claim, the order to pay the legal costs of Mps and the former top management for 1.2 million euros. Serafico Bivona who, according to reports from Corriere della Sera, spoke of a "widely awaited sentence" as "the orientation of the judge was clear from the order of a year ago which excluded the appointment of an official technical consultant. The lawsuit was initiated by Alken in 2016, well before the new facts emerged with the October 2020 ruling and then with Bellavia's report on impaired loans ". Therefore "the sentence can not only be appealed by Alken but it does not change what can be ascertained in subsequent degrees".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/ecco-come-m5s-e-bivona-hanno-fatto-splash-su-mps/ on Mon, 02 Aug 2021 07:56:37 +0000.