The government's wielding its
so-called golden power and vetoing takeover bids by UniCredit
for Banco BPM and Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) for Mediobanca
would be a last resort, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti
told the House Wednesday.
UniCredit, Italy's second biggest bank after Intesa Sanpaolo,
launched its bid for the country's third biggest lender Banco
BPM late last year, and was followed by MPS, the sixth-biggest,
launching a bid for premier merchant bank Mediobanca, the
country's eighth-biggest financial institution.
Giorgetti said at question time that the government's
assessments on the exercise of the golden power in the UniCredit
and MPS cases "will obviously be carried out in accordance with
the provisions of the law and therefore in a proportionate,
reasonable manner and in compliance with the principle of
non-discrimination, remembering that each decision is taken
following a thorough investigation involving the companies
involved and that even in the case of final determinations
concerning the exercise of the powers, the range of possible
solutions, which sees the veto on the operations only as a last
resort, allows for the adoption of monitoring and prescriptive
measures fully suited to reconciling the interests at stake".
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