New bank plan

Press, 7 August 1982, Page 9

New bank plan

NZPA-Reuter Milan Senior officials from seven Italian banks yesterday completed a plan to liquidate the troubled Banco Ambrosiano and to reconstitute it as Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano S P A. The bankers who last month put up SUS7OO million ($945 million to rescue Banco Ambrosiano, had met at the headquarters of the Banca Popolare di Milano, a spokesman for the bank said. They would meet again today if necessary. The Bank of Italy has so far strongly resisted the enforced liquidation of the country’s biggest private bank because of its possible impact on international confidence in the Italian financial system. But bankers say they could no longer see any other solution to Banco Ambrosiano’s problems. The bankers said that the seven-bank pool would form the main shareholders of the new banking group, which would not include the old group's overseas subsidaries and as-

An Ambrosiano subsidiary in Luxemburg has been declared in default of up to $5OO million and its British, Swiss and West German creditor banks are following developments in the complex Ambrosiano saga closely to see whether they will get their money back. Banco Ambrosiano named a new board to its Luxemburg holding company yesterday, but it gave no hint about how its debts would be handled. The three State-appointee commissioners took over Ambrosiano after an investigation into the group’s affairs revealed estimated debts of $1.9 billion, much of it lent to Latin America, and the bank’s president, Roberto Calvi, was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London.

Financial sources say that the Latin American loans were made to finance houses controlled by the Vatican bank, the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, but it has said little about its involvement in the affair.