It often happens that at the Palio di Siena the district that was given for loser, indeed, for a sure loser. It is the beauty of the Palio. And in the race between Rocca Salimbeni – historical headquarters of the oldest bank in the world – and the good lounges of Milanese finance, triumphed the jockey on which nobody would have bet a euro: an almost failed bank, a brand on which no one wanted to aim and that had been offered without success to the buyers of half of Europe.

The Monte dei Paschi has risen from its ashes to the point of putting her hands on the very mother of Italian finance, Mediobanca and with good probability, in the spring, also general.

Making another comparison – taking it this time from football – is as if Sassuolo had bought Juventus.
However, this is the outcome of the battle that fought for seven months now, when Luigi Lovaglio, the CEO of Montepaschi, a seventy -year -old banker with a long past (44 years) in Unicredit and then to Credito Valtellinese, announced the intention of Siena to launch an Opas (the purchase offer) on MedioBanca.

It was the worst bank in Europe

Many thought about a joke. The bank that in 2016 was the worst in Europe for patrimonial solidity, which “dared” to assault the first of the class, or that the first of the class were still felt, that world accustomed to “weighing the actions and not to count them”, as its founder Enrico Cuccia said, that world in which the relationships between the major ones – the great families of good Italian capitalism, those who divide the properties of newspapers, football teams – Much more than the shareholders and the value of their actions.

The conquest of Mediobanca by MPS, with everything it entails (the inevitable resignation of the current top of Piazzetta Cuccia, Alberto Nagel in the lead) are a real turning point in the recent history of the Italian economy. Often definitive expressions are bother to represent important moments of the news, this time instead in saying “ends an era” does not overdo it at all.

The end of an era

First of all, the operation will give an important reorganization to the so -called “bank risiko” ongoing for some time. As they mentioned, it is more than likely that thanks to 13% of the capital of Generali owned by Mediobanca, MPS will also get the control of the Trieste lion (real large lung of tricolor finance, with 800 billion assets invested), as is it possible that the merger between the same MPS (strengthened by Mediobanca) and Banco BPM, thus constituting the third Italian center (after Intesa and Unicredit).

The Mediobanca operation mainly gives the sign that the old logics ended, those in which they are the masters in the big business banks and in the surface were not the “masters” (the play on words are forgiven) that is, the shareholders, even the main ones, those who had invested a lot of money, but a board of top managers who once named did the beauty and bad weather. At most, the shareholders witnessed from the front row to the choices that however decided others with their money.

A situation that could work until the great Italian capitalism was in the hands of a few, all in Italy, but which in the era of multinationals with shareholding and widespread property could not hold up. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the news of MPS’s conquest of Mediobanca arrives on the day when John Elkann, the grandson of the lawyer Agnelli, will come to go, ten months to social services to carry out public utility works in a charity institution.

Elkann and the “test” to avoid the process

Last aspect to report is the role of the government. Mps is participated by the Treasury (an important 11.7 percent), now controlled by the duo Meloni-Giorgetti (for three years, and it will still be for at least two others). Beyond the formal aspects, all respected, it is clear that in the mediobanca match the government cheered for MPS. Just to the decisive role that at the topical moment of the game they exercised the social security speakers, shareholders of the two banks and supervised by the treasure: deciding to join the Opas made the road to others, who in fact followed.

It would be too much and perhaps wrong to say, as Piero Fassino did in 2005, that the government “has a bank” (possibly the government and its very rich members, such as the Delfin of the Delvecchio heirs and the Caltagirone group), certain that the weight of the treasure in future corporate structures and in the backgrounds will be felt.