European Interest

Why Italy should go ahead with mutual bank reform

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The Ministry of Economy and Finance, Rome, Italy.

Italy’s Economy Minister Giovanni Tria warned on July 17 that it would “complicated” to stop the planned overhaul of the country’s banking sector. He said most Italian mutual banks want to go ahead with the overhaul.

“Blocking the reform would mean abolishing it,” Tria told a parliamentary commission.

As reported by the Reuters news agency, however, the League – part of the ruling coalition – has called for a moratorium of the reform.

The overhaul was introduced by the former centre-left government and is forcing hundreds of mutual banks (BCCs) to merge into two large groups.

The 2016 initiative aims at strengthening these banks, which are often tiny and have low profitability and a higher-than-average bad loan burden.

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