ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The operation of Intesa Sanpaolo launched through an Opas (Public Purchase and Exchange Offer) on Monte dei paschi di Siena (Mps) is potentially able to “redesign” the banking system and, more generally, of Italian finance. Leopoldo Gasbarro, director of the economic-financial magazine Wall Street Italia, interviewed by the Italpress agency.
“For a matter of antitrust the dominant position of Intesa, if only the bank that had done the operation, would have been excessive. So this operation also goes through a form of collaboration, so we define it, with two other institutes that are on one side Bper and on the other Unipol. The operation will bring a part of the old Mps door system to go under the aegis of Unipol and Bper bank, while the structure, perhaps, more important than the bank, than that of Mediobanca, with everything that competes for the part of financial advice – then Mediobanca Premier – will end under the direct aegis of Intesa. So it is an operation that not only involves Intesa and Monte dei Paschi, but involves many other institutions and many other players within those institutions,” said Gasbarro.
“Insomma, it is an operation that is redesigning the world of banks, the world of Italian finance, and that closes a path of history that lasts, regarding Monte dei Paschi, now for a few centuries,” he added. “We are also saying goodbye to another institution that represented, with Piazzetta Cuccia, the novero of merchant banks, and in that bank they signed the perhaps most important contracts of our country, industrial and not only”, he still recalled.
According to Gasbarro, “although as a huge group what is now composing, is still very small compared to those that are the size of other banking systems” on the international scene. “If you take for example the largest Chinese banks, before arriving at that size we should galoppa so much”, said Gasbarro, then citing some European giants, such as Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, “Spanish bank but with internationalities throughout South America”.
According to the director of Wall Street Italy, they need “of completely different economies of scale” compared to those that have been made up to today. “The Italian banks have protected Italian savings in some way in these years, but financial education policies have not allowed, together with protection, the growth of the world of Italian savings”.
For the future it is necessary to work on trust, according to Gasbarro, “and together with trust there is need for growth, capitalization, structures that at this moment Italian banks, although solid, do not have in the relationship with international finance”.
In an international context marked by profound geopolitical and technological changes, the transformation path sees the Italian banking system, according to Gasbarro, just at the beginning. “A few years ago the president of the Abi (Italian banking association), Antonio Patuelli, said that few banking groups in Italy would remain. I believe that we are approaching this idea and I am convinced that we are not yet at the end of the Banking Risiko, but that we will still see so many and beautiful in the coming years”, said Gasbarro.
“There are so many banks that have to find their own size, which must find their identity in the relationship with both investment and savings, and must also find a new way to cope with the disintermediation that the world of artificial intelligence will bring in this sector. If there is no right way between cost tingling and reconstruction of relationship and trust, many of these institutions will no longer have material to operate on. So the important thing is to find a very clear vocation, identifying the activity that the bank wants to have and maintain over time, continuing to grow,” said Gasbarro.
“We cannot only grow by acquisition, but we must grow by values, by responsibility, by identity,” he said, “today trust is the real currency of exchange between the world of finance, the world of banks and the world of savings”.
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