What will happen to the Popolare di Bari?
All the latest news on Banca Popolare di Bari: facts, numbers, comments and scenarios. The article by Emanuela Rossi
Change at the top but still a lot of uncertainty for Popolare di Bari, the bank out of the shackles of the Jacobini management and now controlled by Mediocredito centrale, which however still navigates in uncertain waters. To the new CEO, Cristiano Carrus, the task of relaunching a credit institution which – taking into account the 12.4 million in taxes pertaining to it – closed the first six months of 2021 with a loss of 101.1 million . A delicate situation as also appears from the letter that the chairman of the board, Gianni De Gennaro, sent to the employees . "Much has been done but there is still a lot to do in the interest of those who work there, those who have invested capital, savers, families and companies in the area – wrote De Gennaro -, realizing the indispensable conditions of equilibrium management, from which it follows the maintenance of the equally necessary capital solidity ".
THE FAREWELL OF BERGAMI
So, after about 14 months at the helm of the Bari public office, on December 13 last year the CEO Giampiero Bergami , manager of Bologna, former Unicredit and Montepaschi, resigned , who – according to journalistic rumors – would have matured the choice following the negative results of the bank and the differences with the top management of Mcc, led by president Bernardo Mattarella. Hearing the commission of inquiry on the banking and financial system a month earlier, Bergami was clear: Mediocredito had "inherited a bank that has been away from the market for 10 years". His resignation was preceded, in the summer, by those of the board of statutory auditors and the chief lending officer, Alberto Beretta.
"Surely a complicated phase has ended in which the bank needed to focus and start restructuring – was Mattarella's comment on Bergami's farewell -. A new one is opening up, oriented on our part towards an interest that is the only one we have and have always had, which is to give back to the territory a healthy, transparent reality capable of generating value for the stakeholders. This is the only lighthouse that has guided us and that will always guide us ".
WHO IS CRISTIANO CARRUS
In place of Bergami , therefore, comes Cristiano Carrus , a 63-year-old Venetian, CFO of Popolare di Bari from February 2020 to October of the same year when he was appointed chief business officer. In the past, Carrus was general manager and then CEO with functions of general manager of Veneto Banca – which then ended up in compulsory administrative liquidation in 2017 – and before that he worked in Banca Popolare di Verona and then in various institutes of the Banco Popolare Group, making however, a long way from that first job as an air, railway and naval ticketing clerk in 1977-1978 (Carrus has a tourism expert's diploma). With the new CEO, as explained in a note, the board “shares the vision to guide the Bank towards a phase of recovery and growth”.
Carrus's appointment was not particularly appreciated by Lando Maria Sileoni, general secretary of Fabi, the first banking union. “Carrus represents the last resort – he said bluntly -. The bank must be definitively relaunched and valued for what it deserves because it has a top quality customer base and workers who are paying financially to be able to relaunch it in some way ". For Sileoni “even if Carrus were to fail it is clear that the whole project of the Bank of the South, which as things stand today is almost a mirage, would be definitively set aside. There must be perfect harmony this time between Mediocredito and Popolare di Bari ”.
THE CURRENT SITUATION
The reference of the number one of the Fabi is to the decree-law 142 "Urgent measures to support the credit system of the South and for the construction of an investment bank" of December 2019 , converted in February 2020, with which Invitalia and its operational arm , Mediocredito centrale, were entrusted with the task of creating a credit pole for the South of the country. However, a goal that has not taken off at the moment nor is it clear how it can be implemented.
Meanwhile, the former owners of the bank, Marco Jacobini and his son Gianluca, are still on trial as they are accused of false accounting and obstruction of supervision. It should be remembered that before the arrival of Mcc – which in June 2020 took control of Popolare di Bari with a capital increase of 430 million – it was the turn of the Interbank Deposit Protection Fund (https: //www.startmag .it / economy / popular-bank-of-bari-will-be-able-to-recover /) which between December 2019 – when Via Nazionale placed the bank under extraordinary administration – and March 2020 paid 1,200 million into the bank's coffers.
The collapse of the Popolare di Bari, however, led to the zeroing of the value of the shares with consequent heavy losses for the 66 thousand shareholders. For this reason, two amendments to the Budget Law were presented in December – one signed by Barbara Lezzi (formerly M5S, now Gruppo Misto) and one by Dario Damiani (Forza Italia) – to create a relief fund for savers and bank shareholders. with a ceiling for compensation of 150 thousand euros per person. Anyone who had been a member of the board of directors or the control and supervisory bodies or the board of statutory auditors or who had held the role of chief executive officer, director and deputy general manager was excluded from access to the fund. The changes to the text have not found room for maneuver, however the go-ahead was given to an agenda of the deputy Francesca Anna Ruggiero (M5S) with which the government undertook to "evaluate the opportunity to undertake suitable and timely initiatives, in the next useful provision and in compliance with public finance constraints, aimed at compensating the savers of Banca Popolare di Bari for the heavy losses suffered by the collapse of shares that would have been envisaged as safe, easily liquidated and protected from potential losses ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/che-fine-fara-la-popolare-di-bari/ on Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:30:37 +0000.