Esm, Patuelli: "If the rules change, the banks will no longer buy BTp"

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"We are free to buy sovereign bonds, we do not have a portfolio constraint and in this phase we have about 400 billion Italian public debt (in the banks' balance sheets – ed): the problem is what the Italian Republic does to protect the public debt , it is not a question of bank debt and if the conditions relating to the public debt alter or due to greater absorption or elements that favor claims, it is clear that the banks will underwrite less public debt, we will not buy them anymore ».

Antonio Patuelli, president of the Italian Banking Association, is clear in front of the journalists during a meeting with the Italian press which talked about the reform of the State-saving fund, the introduction of collective action clauses (CAC) which make it possible to aggregate all sovereign bonds and restructure them with a single vote of creditors (single limb) and of the German proposal to 'price' banks' sovereign debt exposures as a condition for proceeding to share risks with a single deposit guarantee system .

The ABI president added: "I do not get involved in the internal political and government polemics of this phase, they have not made a table with their" stakeholders "and consequently their responsibilities are managed, I will judge later". As for the CACs, it did not want to specify further by merely indicating: "I am nothing, I read the newspapers, it is not a subject on which the Italian banking world has been informed by the institutions of the Republic".

Patuelli does not want to enter into the diatribe underway in the last few days within the government and among the national political forces on the reform of the European Stability Mechanism. However, he sent an explicit message to the government confirming that the banks are extremely worried about the new rules agreed at European level and practically at the last stage of their approval. This also concerns the introduction of the new clauses of collective action on new sovereign debt issues agreed at the time with the assent of the Italian government at the time of the "Count 1".