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LATEST ARTICLES
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Enel could trigger the largest step-up event in the sustainability-linked bond market if it misses its CO₂ emissions targets at the end of this year. How the market reacts will set the tone for the future of these instruments.
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In one of his last interviews in office, Ignazio Visco sets the record straight on his controversial 12 years as Italy’s central bank governor: a period of almost constant crisis. Today, the country’s NPL problems seem cured but, as he acknowledges, simmering risks remain.
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A market-beating increase in UniCredit’s share price is just the beginning, chief executive Andrea Orcel tells Euromoney. He must now prove the many remaining sceptics wrong and show the bank can still thrive when net interest margins fall and credit costs rise.
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Slawomir Krupa may yet turn around Societe Generale. But it won’t be by shock and awe.
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The political response to rising bank profits should focus more on debt distress than on deposit rates and taxation.
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A new job running Bayern Munich's finances could be more rewarding for HVB CEO Michael Diederich, especially after UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel’s push for more cuts in Germany.
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With far-right leader Giorgia Meloni now set to become Italy’s new prime minister, can policies put in place by her predecessor – coupled with reputational self-help – prevent Italian banks from taking another hit?
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Crédit Agricole’s purchase of a 9.18% in Banco BPM could have benefits, even if it doesn’t presage a full takeover.
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After the 2020 sale of its US bank, BBVA’s global ambitions in retail are alive and well. It has entered Brazil with digital bank Neon, ploughed more capital into UK app-based lender Atom Bank and launched in Italy in a way that presages branchless growth across the eurozone.
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The launch of ISY Bank spearheads a new cloud-banking strategy at the Italian lender as it seeks to reduce costs, counter fintech and target international retail growth.
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In his first year as chief executive, Andrea Orcel has backed out of a deal to buy Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and prioritized capital distributions at UniCredit. However, his flirtation with an acquisition in Russia has shown that the bank can still raise eyebrows. Orcel talks to Euromoney about the bank’s biggest opportunities and how M&A can help realize them.
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Beyond the headline-grabbing talks on buying Banca Monte dei Paschi, the new chief executive has radically reshaped the bank as he seeks to better harness its potential.
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Chief executive Andrea Orcel’s new plan for UniCredit has little of the asset-selling drama of his predecessor. Whether it works better than the old strategy may be longer in the telling.
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The world’s oldest bank lives to see another day, but the taxpayer – and the local workforce – will pay a heavy price
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With local elections fuelling the political sensitivity of UniCredit’s mooted MPS deal, it will be even harder for CEO Andrea Orcel to secure both national support and investor returns.
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With in-house asset managers in vogue, UniCredit chief executive Andrea Orcel might try to revisit the bank’s sale of Pioneer to Amundi.
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Francesca Nenci, the recently appointed global head of trade finance at UniCredit, talks to Euromoney about the bank’s trade finance business and the client trends that will shape her approach to her new position.
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It is the deal everyone was waiting for – but UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel has to appear guarded, as he enters exclusive negotiations with Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena.
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The bank’s new CEO signals openness to M&A, while flagging investment fees as a key profit driver this year.
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Jean Pierre Mustier has spoken candidly with Euromoney throughout his five years of running UniCredit. Here is the inside story of how the first foreign chief executive of Italy’s international banking champion came close to continental leadership but left in acrimony – after clashing with the country’s financial establishment and with chairman-elect Pier Carlo Padoan.
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A primarily national approach to post-Covid bad debt has cut adrift states such as Greece and Portugal, making future banking crises more likely.
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The consummate dealmaker appeals to shareholders and the board, by being an Italian with a big international profile.
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In rushing to oust chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier halfway through the reporting cycle, UniCredit’s board may have revealed its weaknesses, not its strength.
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UniCredit entered the Covid-19 crisis flush with capital. That money was earmarked for dividends and share buybacks. So far, it has gone on frontloading loan write-offs.
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The recent wave of M&A has left behind weaker banks such as Banco BPM, Sabadell and, above all, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Jean Pierre Mustier’s exit from UniCredit shows why.
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Jean Pierre Mustier’s decision to leave UniCredit raises the alarming prospect of the crippled Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena pulling down a much bigger and stronger Italian bank.
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Pre-2008 M&A mistakes still stand in the way of a bolder bank purchase such as Banco BPM.
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Tighter BTP-Bund spreads obviate the need for an international sub-holding, UniCredit CEO Jean Pierre Mustier tells Euromoney.
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Incoming UniCredit chairman Pier Carlo Padoan could be a useful ally to CEO Jean Pierre Mustier, but the latter may not realise his dreams in Germany and Europe unless the bank plays a greater role in Italy, too.
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UniCredit CEO Jean Pierre Mustier is among bankers pushing for easier corporate access to government equity, as state-backed loans have heightened firms’ indebtedness, and firms’ sales struggle to recover.
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Italy’s anti-trust authority could yet side with those who argue UBI Banca will serve Italy’s banking system better by doing acquisitions of its own.
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Banca d’Italia plays a key role behind the scenes in embedding distributed ledger at the core of the country’s banking system.
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Entering a potential credit crisis, when they are still battling an old one, leaves Italy’s banks exposed. That means strong government backing is more important than ever.
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Central banks have told lenders to eat into their buffers, but intense debate remains over recognition of non-performing loans in the push for debt moratoria.
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Debt forgiveness may stave off an immediate banking crisis in the country hardest hit so far, but the longer-term outlook is grave.
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Bankers say state guarantees to support payment holidays could prevent loan defaults.
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What was Italy’s biggest bank is giving free rein to Intesa Sanpaolo in Italy, making CEO Carlo Messina’s crown even more secure.
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Intesa Sanpaolo’s €4.9 billion raid on UBI Banca could inspire similar deals, but it’s an eminently Italian takeover, not least due to the role of Alberto Nagel’s Mediobanca.
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If the reversal rate is lower elsewhere, Italy and Germany can’t blame the ECB.
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Leonardo Del Vecchio’s arrival as the biggest shareholder in Mediobanca caught CEO Alberto Nagel off guard, stirring debate about Nagel’s handling of the bank’s stake in Generali. Nagel insists he can find an acquisition in wealth management that is good enough to justify selling. But is his and Mediobanca’s influence in the country on the wane?
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Intesa Sanpaolo chief executive Carlo Messina bristles at the idea that Italian finance should be an underdog in Europe. His bank can prove otherwise and, he says, lower interest rates will only make its fee businesses shine more brightly. But in a stagnating economy with tech-savvy challengers gaining share and other Italian banks recovering, are acquisitions the only way for Intesa to grow and retain the favour of investors and clients?
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As Italy’s biggest bank unveils a new plan and new targets, CEO Jean Pierre Mustier says negative rates and Basel III reforms mean “8% is the new 10%” for European banks’ returns on equity
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The Italian fashion house’s sustainability linked loan, arranged by Crédit Agricole, builds the catwalk for other retailers to follow suit.
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Blockchain has the potential to revolutionize trade finance, but a lack of standardization will hinder its adoption.
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Italy’s biggest bank is offloading choice bits of its 60,000-strong art collection – in doing so it is going in a different direction to peers like Intesa Sanpaolo.
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UniCredit lifer and top Italian speaker to step down as number two; Khayat and Bisagni take wider commercial roles as Burton becomes CIB head.
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Harsher-than-expected 100% coverage deadlines; no ‘significant’ impact on capital, insist banks.
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Banco Santander’s board has botched the appointment of the bank's next CEO in the clumsiest way possible.
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The political tune of 2018 was not to UniCredit’s taste. Chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier needs a different rhythm to bring back the party spirit.
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Any bank with a gross NPL ratio of 27.5% has a problem – Italy’s Banca Carige can’t avoid insolvency unless it comes up with a radical solution, fast.
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Resignations of directors after shareholders failed to approve a capital increase prompt an early intervention
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Chance of Société Générale merger remote, but bigger European banks to emerge in ‘medium term’.
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European banks are investing in and using the tools of an AI startup applying deep learning to syndicated loans, asset management and, soon to come, primary bond markets.
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Banks in the eurozone periphery have need, and some justification, for a new targeted LTRO.
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Italian banks and the government at risk of failure within 12 months; signs of a more reconciliatory attitude to the EU.
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Scandals and losses are ending the co-dependency between European banks and retail shareholders, highlighting the conflict of interest in relying on depositors for capital – and showing up a barrier to Europe’s new bail-in framework. A less parochial, more austere but more accountable era is just beginning.
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The Italian bank has bought some time with the ECB, but what it really needs is a white knight.
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Investors worry that volatility in Italian government bond prices may leave some Italian banks needing to raise capital just as the markets close to them.
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A time of crisis is a time for action. At last.
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Euromoney talks to ECB Single Supervisory Mechanism board member Ignazio Angeloni about the challenges the SSM faces, and how eurozone integration, and in some cases bank mergers, could help improve European banks’ competitiveness.
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Regulatory pressures are beginning to force firms to innovate as tech developments make it ever easier for companies to keep digital records of various transactions – and providers are taking advantage.
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A crisis is forcing a spike in small bank mergers in Italy. It is a more tentative trend in Germany, although these banks’ common desire for independence might make such crises inevitable.
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Brexit-sparked competition from US banks a good thing, ECB supervisor says; Italian populism ‘a burdensome tax’ on banks.
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Italy flows up despite populists’ impact on bond yields; warns of peak debt across the West
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Despite the latest attempts to stymie them, Eurosceptic populists remain the most powerful political force in Italy – largely thanks to anger at a banking crisis, often fanned by the ECB. Now their approach to power is killing the last chance of fixing the banking union, and possibly the euro.
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Firm buys Credito di Romagna stake; European banking licence adds to appeal.
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After a year in the recovery ward, 2017 results show some banks are healing. The most serious illness, negative rates, is stubbornly resistant however. The danger remains that banks may not recover before another disease –financial or technological – strikes.
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Carve out of NPL servicing; minority owner sought for Eurizon.
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Italy’s banking crisis might move Mediobanca ever further away from its past as the country’s corporate gatekeeper. But its merchant banking legacy still gives it valuable links and a clubby prestige cherished by clients and shareholders.
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Investors can support their local lenders by preparing to sell them.
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Banca Carige pulled off a recapitalization last December that even chief executive Paolo Fiorentino thought difficult. It raised more than four times its market cap, just ahead of an ECB deadline. Euromoney asks how he did it and how the bank can reward its investors.
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Any attempt to deal with Europe’s non-performing loans always seems to end up in a fight.
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With progress made on profitability, the chief executive is turning to deep-seated organizational challenges
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Lenders recoil at new deadlines for 100% NPL coverage; ECB throws spanner in works of Banca Carige capital raising.
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An investment fund focused on banks with a slant on Europe and Italy might sound like a recipe for disaster, but Davide Serra of Algebris tells a story of market-beating returns and snowballing AuM, and thinks the best times lie ahead.
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Nearly every time Europe’s Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive is called into play, there seems to be a new justification for using public money.
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A textbook case, a long-inevitable state bailout and a brazen political fudge: Europe’s BRRD has had something of a rough ride this summer. As the region’s banks brace themselves for the capital-raising marathon that is MREL, are the new resolution regulations actually doing more harm than good?
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As a self-described ‘insider-outsider’ at UniCredit, Jean Pierre Mustier has transformed the image of Italy’s biggest bank – inside and out – over an extraordinary 12 months as CEO.
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Firm behind Atlante rubbishes private offers for Veneto banks; freed funds for MPS deal a ‘coincidence’.
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Two weeks after the Popular rescue was hailed as a triumph of Europe’s post-crisis resolution regulations, the collapse of two Italian lenders is set to cost the taxpayer €17 billion
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Just two weeks after Banco Popular’s rescue was hailed as a triumph of Europe’s post-crisis resolution regulation in action, Italian taxpayers are footing the €17 billion bill for the collapse of two long-troubled lenders. Maybe that post-crisis regulation isn’t quite as effective as it is supposed to be.
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The ECB’s inflation outlook in March gave hope that, after a year in intensive care, European banks are recovering. There is a sense that Basel risk-weighting rules pose less of an immediate danger, while peak regulation has passed. Is European banking cured or only in remission?
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As UBI Banca prepares a new capital raising linked to its purchase of three rescued banks, CEO Victor Massiah says his bank and others can do more to build economies of scale through mergers.
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As UniCredit goes from zero to hero, is Intesa taking the opposite route?
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Breaking the sovereign/bank nexus has been a priority for policymakers since the global financial crisis. The problem is particularly acute in Europe. One proposal, to end the preferential capital treatment for the sovereign exposures of banks, may presage a revolution in European capital markets. But getting Europe’s rival factions to agree on a policy is far from simple.
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Setting up a European bad bank is a dauntingly complicated and time-consuming proposition. Europe’s NPL problem needs to be tackled at the national level.
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Bank warns on AT1 coupon if €13 bln rights issue fails; move highlights importance of capital increase.
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European bad bank could incentivize banks to transfer their bad loans, but the problem still won’t be fixed without state aid.
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Italy could be clawing itself out of a pit of worry about its banks, according to the latest Euromoney Bank Risk results.
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As EGM approves capital increase, lender spells out impact on regulatory capital if things go wrong.
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UniCredit CEO Jean-Pierre Mustier has unveiled his new strategic plan for the bank. At its heart is a €13 billion rights issue. But look deeper and Mustier is at pains to stress UniCredit’s European, rather than Italian, credentials. He’ll need to convince shareholders that this time the bank has a real prospect of breaking free of the country’s bad debt troubles.
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It is time European regulators proposed a BRRD that is fit for purpose.
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The bank hopes a deal to offload bad debts to Fortress and Pimco will show investors that it is putting its NPL issues behind it
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UniCredit CEO Jean-Pierre Mustier has unveiled his new strategic plan for the bank. With a €13 billion rights issue at its centre, he will need to convince shareholders that this time the bank has a real prospect of breaking free of the country's banking troubles
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Reports of a government plan to buy subordinated bonds and convert them into shares in Monte dei Paschi di Siena suggest that a state-backed rescue is now inevitable.
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The Italian lender’s revised capital plan prompted its share price to plunge 39% in a matter of hours. Time is running out for a capital raise by year-end.
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Former BAML and JPM banker takes over troubled bank; share-price fall seen scuppering €5 billion rights issue.
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The calming of the political shock of Brexit, with oil prices now receiving Opec support, is preventing global risks from worsening, yet with a referendum looming in Italy, elections in the US and Europe to come, not to mention frail banks and several countries mired in difficulties, it might be the calm before another global storm.
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Benign scenarios used by EBA; CCAR reveals greater capital shortfalls.
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Italian banks have allowed non-performing loans to swell to such numbers that they are now a central concern for the European and global financial system. Delving into Italy’s bad-debt suggests the problem might be even worse than public figures show. Can the country turn it all round – even if it has the time to do so?
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Every proposed scheme for sorting out Italy’s bad debt problems has its own shortcomings. And that’s before taking into account the fact that those problems could get worse. Pressure from the ECB is fanning the flames of the crisis. Fixing legacy problems could now require dramatic action.
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The bad-debt crisis killing some of Italy's biggest banks looks likely to get worse before it gets any better. That has frightening implications, not just for the country, but for the rest of Europe as well. In the following features, Louise Bowman and Dominic O'Neill investigate the options left to political and financial leaders from Rome to Frankfurt, and reveal the depth of the problems they face in Italy's bad-debt heartlands.
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The ECB’s demand for a €1 billion capital increase in the banking union’s first big merger between Banco Popolare and BPM has dowsed hopes for a slew of similar deals that might add value to banks that desperately need it.
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Italy’s banks cannot deal with their NPLs unless they have capital, but they are not being allowed to recapitalize until they have dealt with their NPLs.
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ECB demands MPS shed €10 billion loans; last minute private deal scrambled.
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Country-by-country assessments of Europe’s banking sector show that risks are at new highs, as the financial services industry struggles to cope with the aftershocks of the 2007/08 crisis. Resolving the Italian bank crisis is key to how it will all pan out.
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While the accelerated sales of stakes in Fineco and Pekao signal a new style, UniCredit's returning CEO says HVB still fits with the core Italian business
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Under a new CEO, investors in Italy’s biggest bank need to see shock and awe.
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Bank backstop fund competes with private equity; doubters say it should be four times bigger.
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State-backed Cassa Depositi e Prestiti's (CDP) mission to jumpstart the Italian economy has been met with scepticism. CEO Fabio Gallia tells Euromoney why he is convinced it will succeed, while fears over Italy's NPL conundrum and bank-restructuring saga refuse to abate.
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Mixed regulatory messages cloud the outlook after Italy’s first big bank merger since 2008.
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The Single Supervisory Mechanism, the eurozone’s new banking supervisor, is tasked with combating financial fragmentation, building a banking union and, above all, making Europe’s banks investable once again. The first few months of its tenure were some of the most difficult since the dark days of the euro crisis. Bankers’ scepticism about the new regime is the least of their worries.
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State bad debt scheme to chip not chop; BCC reform could create top-three lender.
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Troubled Tuscan lender taps new funding; ABS benefits from ‘safe haven’ status.
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Bail-in uncertainties remain; Portugal and Italy mark tough start for BRRD.
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Europe’s plan for a bad bank in Italy, it turns out, is to not have a bad bank at all.
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Italy, Austria, Germany take brunt of 18,000 job losses; lingering capital doubts overshadow efficiency drive.
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International investors are scrambling to establish themselves as the country’s huge NPL market finally starts to creak open. But this is not a market for the faint-hearted, and achieving those double-digit rates of return will require skill and unrivalled local knowledge.
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CFO leaves MPS for UniCredit after new chairman arrives; lack of buyers stymies M&A.