ROME: Italian Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said on Thursday that the market was wrong to think that the country's banking system might be weak, and added that Europe's bank regulator was not focusing exclusively on Italy.
Italian finance stocks have fallen 24 percent so far this year in part because the European Central Bank said it will take a close look at non-performing loans held by some lenders.
"The perception that there's weakness in the Italian banking system is inexact," Padoan said in an interview with RAI state television. He said there was no speculative run on Italian banks underway.
Padoan said the reaction to the ECB's announced scrutiny of non-performing loans was "distorted" because it was not focused solely on Italian lenders.
"It was interpreted by the media and also by the market as focused only on Italian banks," he said, adding that the ECB's head of banking supervision, Daniele Nouy, indicated on Wednesday that there would be no intervention in Italian banks.
Comments
Comments are closed.