Monte dei Paschi director resigns after insider trading allegations
Milanese lender says Stefano Di Stefano stepping down after prosecutors opened an investigation into him
A top Italian Treasury official and Monte dei Paschi di Siena board member has stepped down from his role at the bank following insider trading allegations.
MPS said in a statement on Wednesday that Stefano Di Stefano, who also heads the acquisitions and stakes management division at the Italian Treasury, was resigning “with immediate effect, for personal reasons and in connection with the commencement of investigations concerning him”.
Milanese prosecutors have placed Di Stefano under investigation for allegedly buying more than €100,000 in MPS and Mediobanca shares ahead of the Tuscan lender’s takeover bid of its larger Milanese rival last year, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Di Stefano and the Italian Treasury could not immediately be reached for comment.
MPS’s surprise takeover of Mediobanca last year has attracted widespread scrutiny from Italian authorities. Some of the top investors in the bank and the lender’s chief executive Luigi Lovaglio are under investigation in a separate market manipulation probe for allegedly acting in concert without disclosing that to the market.
All deny any wrongdoing. The investigation has put pressure on Lovaglio, whose three-year term as MPS chief executive ends in the spring and who is hoping to secure another mandate from investors.
The deal activity last year followed the Italian Treasury’s privatisation of MPS, the lender it nationalised in 2017. The privatisation is also being scrutinised by Milanese prosecutors after claims by large investors they were shut out of the bidding process at the time of the stake sale.
Italy now owns a 5 per cent stake in the group and Di Stefano was one of the directors the government had appointed to the board.
MPS’s €17bn acquisition of Mediobanca completed in September, making the group Italy’s third-largest lender by assets after Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit. Shares in MPS have risen more than 40 per cent over the past 12 months.
Lovaglio now wants to complete the full-blown merger of the two lenders and deliver on the cost-cutting promises he outlined in the plan last year.
However, some investors and Mediobanca’s own management would like the two entities to remain separate, stopping short of delisting the Milanese institution from the Milan stock exchange, according to six people involved in the internal talks.
The chief executive will outline his strategy, including plans for Mediobanca’s 13 per cent stake in insurer Generali, on February 27.