Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Visco in pressing the ‘plan’ sufferings – Il Sole 24 Ore

History Article

Close

This article was published May 27, 2015 at 6:36.

Rome

Do, do well, make haste. Never before has the call of the Bank of Italy in a coordinated intervention on non-performing loans had been so clear and repeated. Not one of the many moral suasion to supervised, one addressed yesterday by the governor Ignazio Visco, in his concluding remarks, but a real appeal to decision makers Italians and especially those in Europe, which has the green light last and definitive actions that are likely to be Branded as state aid and thus dissuade banks to make use of them.

Now or never, it seems to say Visco. Because the situation, has suggested yesterday, it is unique and unrepeatable. On the one hand there is the flood of liquidity injected by the ECB through Qe and especially T-lter (a third of which ended at Italian banks) and the rates “fell by more than one point from the beginning of last year,” with “the differential than France and Germany that it has more than halved from the highs of two years ago. ” On the other hand, there is a recovery finally concrete but which should be reinforced. In the middle, companies with their demand for credit is not always satisfied, and especially banks, still cautious about lending more risky because of the impact on the capital (where the ECB is not sparing, in fact) and adjustments on impaired loans, down but still at very high levels: only the 12 listed banks in the first quarter have cost 2.7 billion.

Hence the input of the Governor: settle the accounts of the past to imagine a different future. How? By breaking down the mountain of 350 billion bad debts that is still in the belly to Italian banks: 200 billion suffering, remembers Visco, plus 150 billion of other loans deteriorated; in total, it makes 17.7% of the loans granted. “The development of a secondary market for non-performing loans would help reactivate the full financing of households and businesses,” says Visco. Recalling that “propose initiatives in this direction for some time, even with the assistance of the public sector: we are working with the government to draw them, in compliance with European rules on State aid.”

As already known, the plan designed by the MEF has three measures: Visco specifically mentions the reform of the rules governing the recovery of bankruptcy claims and alignment with the rest of Europe about a year for the tax deductibility of the credit losses, but does not mention the bad bank, which is the third point. Not because it is not considered necessary, but because it is the opposite and politically more difficult to spend one on which the European Commission for now remains intransigent; and because the hope is that in Via Nazionale in the first two measures implemented well maybe the third one can also do without.

“The theme is an ongoing discussion with the European authorities, which we hope will be rapid and constructive,” says Visco, making it clear that this is not only in Brussels, at the Commission, but also in Frankfurt , in the ECB. The feeling is that some glimmer, finally, there is: “At first we found a wall, now you’re thinking,” he said yesterday, a senior official of the Bank of Italy very active on various fronts Community.

The bankers, for their part, are prepared to seize the moment. About 350 billion Npl in recent months on the market there are over 3.5 in just a handful of deal that saw players Mps, Bper, UniCredit: a drop in the bucket. The leading specialists of the bad debts were placed, the room for maneuver is potentially immense. If the market Npl “today is non-existent,” as has brutally reminded always Visco, is a matter of price, that is 29 percentage points on average – according to a recent report from Goldman Sachs – separate the price at which the hips are arranged to sell their Npl price that operators are willing to pay to buy them. Always Goldman, however, estimated that more than half of this gap could be bridged with the revision of the rules on debt recovery. The mountain, therefore, may be undermined.

. @ Marcoferrando77

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



Permalink

LikeTweet

No comments:

Post a Comment