By Christopher Emsden
ROME--The Bank of Italy said Friday that it has set up a
high-level task force to assess the current value of its own shares
and that Governor Ignazio Visco has met with the committee
Friday.
The committee includes Lucas Papademos, a former vice-president
of the European Central Bank and later a prime minister of Greece,
Franco Gallo, a former head of Italy's Constitutional Court, and
Andrea Sironi, rector of Milan's Bocconi University.
The task force met Friday with Mr. Visco and two senior
central-bank officials, Director-General Salvatore Rossi and his
deputy, Fabio Panetta, the Bank of Italy said.
The Bank of Italy is mostly owned by local commercial banks led
by the two largest lenders, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP.MI) and
UniCredit SpA (UCG.MI).
Smaller lenders in particular want their stakes in the Bank of
Italy, booked at long-ago historical values, to be marked up, which
if allowed would allow them to have a stronger capital base in
regulatory terms.
Banca Carige SpA (CRG.MI), a troubled mid-sized lender, has
already revalued up its 4% stake in Bank of Italy on a unilateral
basis.
The Italian government is also considering options, including
potentially replacing the private-sector shareholders, some of
whose stakes have been owned since 1936, when the institution was
set up with 300,00 shares whose book value is equal to EUR156,000
now.
While the banks own shares in the central bank, they do not have
any meaningful say over its governance.
Any revaluation would presumably allow the owners to report
higher capital ratios, while at the same time generating capital
gains taxes to pay to state coffers in Rome.
However, such an accounting scheme might not convince investors.
The value of the share capital of a central bank is "purely
notional," according to Tito Boeri, a professor of economists at
Bocconi.
Mario Draghi, president of the ECB and formerly governor of the
Bank of Italy, referred to the ownership structure of Italy's
central bank as an "anomaly" in 2009.
"It's more a problem of form than substance," Mr. Rossi of the
Bank of Italy said in an interview with Italian daily Il Sole 24
Ore earlier this month.
(Giovanni Legorano in Milan contributed to this report)
Write to Christopher Emsden at chris.emsden@wsj.com