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Bloomberg
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA sold about 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) of troubled loans, reaching its goal for reducing risk two years early.
About 1.6 billion euros of unsecured non-performing loans were sold to Illimity Bank SpA, Monte Paschi said in a statement on Monday. Separately, it sold 0.2 billion euros of unlikely to pay loans, bringing the reduction in non-performing exposures for the year to 3.8 billion euros.
Monte Paschi, 68.2%-held by the Italian government, plans to exit state control by 2021 as required under an EU-approved bailout. The Italian government postponed the publication of Paschi’s exit plan to the beginning of 2020, the Finance Ministry said, without providing a specific date.
The latest sales will cut the bank’s gross bad loans to 12.5% of the total in 2019, beating its goal of 12.9% for 2021, Paschi said.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government plans to send a letter soon to the European Commission and the EU Competition Authority reiterating it will gradually exit its stake, Il Sole 24 Ore reported on December 28.
The state’s plan is to find buyers and eventually combine it with another bank. Earlier this year press reports speculated about Unione di Banche Italiane SpA and Banco BPM SpA as potential merger partners.