The IMF on Wednesday
welcomed the Italian financial industry's Atlante ('Atlas') fund
to help weaker banks. "It's a step in the right direction"
towards cleaning up banks' balance sheets, said Jose' Vinals,
director of the IMF's monetary and capital markets department,
stressing that he appreciated the fact that it was a
private-sector solution. "Italian banks have come a long way in
the last few years" thanks to moves by authorities, he said. The
new Atlante fund for Italy's bank sector aims to obtain three
billion euros from Italy's healthy banks, with giants Intesa
SanPaolo and Unicredit chipping in about one billion each,
various qualified sources said on Wednesday. UBI is set to
contribute 250 million, the merging BPM-Banco Popolare 200
million and BPER 150, with the medium-sized lenders contributing
about 75 million each, the sources said. They said the fund was
aiming to offer a yield of around 6% to investors, an attractive
level at a time of zero interest rates.
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