(Finance) – “Me I am really very satisfied. This is a speech from Assiom Forex, but also from the beginning of the mandate, as a monographic and very important speech. Of first and foremost macroeconomic importance, as regards the decisions that the ECB will have to take. The three points indicated methodologically seem very solid to me and furthermore – on the last page – it is written that it is necessary be careful not to be late in starting to reduce rates. All this comforts me a lot, because I have been tuned into this key for a few weeks. ” You said it Antonio Patuellipresident of the Italian Banking Association (ABI), commenting on the speech by Fabio Panetta, Governor of the Bank of Italy, at the annual Assiom Forex congress.
“As far as banks are concerned, theencouragement to use the good year 2023 to strengthen your assets it’s from me absolutely shared – he explained – As well as the evaluation of the risks of rebounds of recessionary moments in other countries, and of difficulties that may derive from unpredictable – or even predictable – effects such as the Suez Canal crisis, which is the economically strongest one and on which Like Italy, we are the most vulnerable at this moment.”
The invitation to use excess capital to strengthen oneself “is multi-pronged. It is explicitly addressed to the banking world, to each to their own because we must never underestimate the importance of increasingly higher capital thresholds. Then we take into account that 2025 is tomorrow in banking, with the start of the implementation of Basel III. And therefore it is an indispensable prediction.”
“But let the undersigned hypothesize that it is also a very important underlining of the initial transformation of the extraordinary tax on bank revenues into an option also to strongly strengthen the capital solidity of the banks, therefore the capital solidity of banks is a priority strategic value – he added – This seems to me to be a highly strategic fact and which is part of the tradition of the Bank of Italy and of the innovations of the European Central Bank and of almost ten years of European banking union, which brought as its first measure a very strong increase of the minimum capital thresholds, which before the banking union were absolutely lower”.
To a question about the expectation that the government can resubmit tax on extra profitshe answered: “Nobecause the day before yesterday in Parliament an amendment was rejected – in an important commission – aimed at re-presenting the same measure which was then developed in 2023″.
On the Capital and Market Reform Bill, he said that “it is a enabling bill, it is not a bill and it is not a comprehensive law. The draft enabling laws have many possibilities of application and also have a processing time on which the government is based and are subsequently presented to Parliament for obligatory although non-binding opinions, and therefore the journey is very long and is not finished at all“.
“I have a constitutional method reservation on delegated laws, because I am for positive law, that is, for rules that are explicitly clear and definitive from the beginning. When there are draft delegated laws, the real discussion is not only on the initial principles which are necessarily generic, but the real discussion is on the drafts of the delegated decrees, which are drafts, because they are not issued exclusively by the government, but have a further parliamentary process, and this is my opinion on all the draft enabling laws, even those on tax matters”.