Lawsuit for banks

Press, 11 August 1982, Page 39

Lawsuit for banks

PA Rome . The branches of Banco Ambrosiano, the Milan-based bank put into compulsory liquidation by Italian monetary authorities on Friday, opened for business as usual yesterday under new management. Officials of Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano Sp.A., the successor bank set up to take over Ambrosiano’s domestic activities, said that clients' affairs were being handled normally after two days of frantic preparation over the week-end. But in Milan, lawyers re-

presenting some of the 40,000 small shareholders of the former bank said that they were studying a possible challenge to the Treasury 'decree which ordered the liquidation after seven weeks of management by commissioners appointed by the Italian central bank. “This is not a liquidation. , this is a share-out among seven banks of assets belonging to large numbers of small savers.” a lawyer, Marino Mariani, said. The new bank is exclusively owned by the pool of seven institutions which last

month agreed with the Bank of Italy to cover the stricken Milan bank's immediate liquidity needs. The Bank of Italy has said . the seven will try to give former shareholders an interest in the new bank through a preference share issue, but details of the plan have still to be worked out. Ambrosiano’s failure, weeks after the flight and apparent suicide of its former chaimran (Roberto Calvi) was the worst in post-war Italian banking history.