On this side, on the Mps side, a little help on the capital to take time while waiting for the situation to be clarified. Beyond, on the Unicredit side, the support – and the money – for a nice global cleanup, plus the paradox of Italian public money buying German or Austrian bad loans. The Unicredit-Mps operation – at least according to the many indiscretions and the few known things – is becoming more and more connoted as a big mess.
In the press release on the industrial plan of Mps of last December 17, Mps anticipated that as of next March 30 it expects to have a capital deficit of over 300 million. Without giving any indication of what would have been the closest deadline, or December 31st, the end of the financial year. The omission seemed a little less bizarre after BusinessInsider first spotted a deal close to the end of the year yesterday. That is, Sace’s intervention to guarantee a package of performing (non-impaired) loans of 670 million euros, with an agreement signed on 30 December last. Both Sace and Mps are controlled by the Treasury and thanks to the information document (mandatory for the most significant transactions with related parties) it is possible to understand something more. The Sace guarantee, which is in fact a public guarantee, makes it possible to release approximately Rwa 400 million (risk-weighted assets), essentially provisions, thanks to the fact that the public guarantee allows those loans to be weighted to zero.
The operation therefore translates, the document explains, into “a positive impact on consolidated equity indicators”. Translated: Sace’s intervention is equivalent to a mini-increase in capital equal to 10 basis points of Cet1 without which it is reasonable to think – from the bank it was not possible to have clarifications – that the capital parameters were already at the limit as of last December 31st . While it is possible that the estimate of the other 300 million of missing capital on March 30 will already include the help of Sace.
On the Unicredit side we are for now only to indiscretions. But if the hypothesized intervention of Amco as buyer of a package of non-performing loans reached 20 billion – as written yesterday by the Messenger – the institute would in fact completely clean its balance sheet, given that the total of the bank’s non-performing loans was at September 30 equal to 22.7 billion euros and in the meantime some packages have already been sold. In addition, these credits are mostly related to Italy (7.2 billion) but 3.3 billion are related to Germany and Austria and another 3.5 to Central-Eastern Europe. In addition, on the basis of the hedges already carried out, assuming the sale price and a mix of non-performing loans and probable defaults similar to that of the Amco-Mps transaction, Unicredit would also bring home a nice capital gain. A good deal for the shareholders, less so for the rest of the market. Then there would also be the taxpayers, even if no one seems to care.
–
–
