A government rescue of the world's oldest bank may substantially impact the Italian political sphere...

Paschi Pressed to Disclose Derivative Losses as Vote Looms, By Sonia Sirletti & Elisa Martinuzzi - Jan 23, 2013 10:06 AM MT, Bloomberg News, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...ote-looms.html

Former Monte Paschi Chairman Giuseppe Mussari resigned yesterday as head of the Italian Banking Association lobby group. The world’s oldest lender is under pressure to disclose the full extent of its use of derivatives after saying in November that it needed an additional 500 million euros of government money to bolster capital because of the contracts. Shareholders meet this week to approve two capital raisings required by the Treasury for the lender to get that aid.

“We will ask for full transparency,” Guido Antolini, a member of Associazione di Piccoli Azionisti Azione Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, an association of the lender’s individual investors, said in a telephone interview. “We will want to know what was inherited from previous executives and the actions that the bank is taking to repair the damage.”
Wirbel um Derivate bei Monte dei Paschi, Wirtschaftsnachrichten Gestern, 22:21 (23.01.2013), NZZ, http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/wirtschaft...chi-1.17958485

Der Wirbel um Mussari, der vorerst widerrechtliche Handlungen kategorisch bestritt, und vor allem auch die Unsicherheit bezüglich der finanziellen Folgen des Skandals führten am Mittwoch vorübergehend zu einem schweren Einbruch des MPS-Aktienkurses von bis zu 11%. Das älteste Geldhaus der Welt, das seit letztem Sommer vom früheren Unicredit-Chef Alessandro Profumo präsidiert wird, hatte Ende vergangenen November bereits mitgeteilt, dass es wegen in Vorjahren eingefädelter Derivatetransaktionen vorsorglich 3,9 Mrd. € statt der bis dahin geplanten 3,5 Mrd. € Staatshilfe in Form sogenannter Monti-Bonds beanspruchen werde.