Bank Bailout Balloons, Tab for Italian Banking Crisis Soars

by Wolf Richter, Wolf Street:

Monte dei Paschi di Siena sinks deeper into the mire.

Over the Christmas holidays, when no one was supposed to pay attention, and when the markets were closed, the bailout costs of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the third largest bank in Italy, and the center of the Italian banking crisis, suddenly jumped by 75% to €8.8 billion ($9.2 billion)!

Just how immense the black hole inside of a bank really is remains unknown until the bank collapses entirely and the pieces are sorted out. No one wants to know, especially not bank regulators. But when banks are teetering, and a bank bailout, or rather a bondholder bailout is being discussed, the aspects of that hole begin to emerge, and the hole keeps getting bigger the longer someone looks at it.

Earlier this year, the ECB’s stress tests of 51 large European banks determined that Monte dei Paschi was the shakiest among them. The ECB gave the bank until the end of 2016 to raise enough capital or contemplate the prospect of being wound down.

Last week, after Monte dei Paschi failed to work out a private-sector rescue deal led by JP Morgan, a taxpayer bailout was moved to the front burner. The bank’s shares and bonds were suspended from trading until the details of the bailout would emerge. This came after two prior capital increases from the private sector in recent years had failed to fill the holes. Each time, gullible investors had gotten crushed.

On Friday, the Italian government decided to shanghai its taxpayers into bailing out the bank’s bondholders with only a small haircut for holders of certain junior bonds. The decree it approved to that effect was based on the assumption that a €5-billion bailout – a “precautionary recapitalization” – would be needed.

A “precautionary recapitalization” is EU lingo for a taxpayer bailout of a bank that is “illiquid” but is still deemed “solvent.” If a bank is no longer “solvent,” it needs to be wound down, under the new EU regulations banning state aid. This would entail much bigger losses for bondholders and possibly some losses for uninsured depositors.

However, a “precautionary recapitalization” would only require that certain junior bondholders take a small first loss before a big capital contribution by the state would bail out the rest, on terms that need to be endorsed by EU state-aid officials in Brussels.

But the tab keeps ballooning.

On Monday, the “second” Christmas holiday in Germany and some other European countries, when markets were closed, and when people weren’t supposed to pay attention, the ECB responded to Monte dei Paschi – which the bank has meanwhile announced after leaks had spread the word – that it would need, not €5 billion but €8.8 billion to fill the hole.

The ECB said that the bank was “solvent” – because no one wants to even contemplate winding down the bank and dealing with the actual black hole. But it warned of the “rapid deterioration” of its liquidity position during the three weeks through December 21, caused by large outflows of deposits – a run on the bank via electronic means, as Italians were trying to haul their savings to higher ground.

Monte dei Paschi is going to deal with the ECB’s reply this way, according to Monte dei Paschi’s statement:

“The bank has quickly started talks with the competent authorities to understand the methodologies underlying the ECB’s calculations and introduce the measures for a precautionary recapitalization….”

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