The head of the Italian Banking Association (ABI) on Sunday threatened to sue the European Banking Authority (EBA) over rules announced last week obliging Italian lenders to plug a capital shortfall set at 15.37 billion euros ($20.54 billion).
"ABI will follow every path possible, including the legal one, to oppose the EBA's decision," Giuseppe Mussari told a banking conference in Rome.
EBA's assessment of banks' capital requirements was "wrong in its method and its conclusions, and does not take account of the specific factors affecting Italian banks," Mussari was quoted as saying by Italian news agency ANSA. EBA raised capitalisation requirements for European lenders on Thursday in view of the spreading debt crisis, forcing banks to mark-to-market euro zone debt in their portfolios.
"This puts banks that have always bought sovereign bonds in great difficulty," said Mussari. "How can they continue to do it when they know the rules that applied yesterday will no longer apply?"
On Friday, Italian Industry Minister Corrado Passera also spoke out against EBA's decision, calling it "badly conceived, badly managed, badly timed, and generally unwise because the current crisis above all involves sovereign bonds and public debt."
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