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(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) – The hypothesis of a new revision of the tax on extra profits supports bank stocks in Piazza Affari. The sub-index of the sector gains almost a percentage point and the purchases particularly reward Banca Mps, Bper, Banco Bpm, Unicredit, Banca Mediolanum and Mediobanca. The Abi is working to mitigate the impact of the tax, focusing on tax deductibility.
According to the latest descriptions, the decree could therefore be revised within the deadline for conversion into law, i.e. by October. Intermonte analysts recall that “the incomplete deductibility of interest expense of the banks, which would reduce the risk of the tax being declared unconstitutional,” would also be under consideration.
“At the moment – notes the Sim – the revised calculation mechanism with the tax cap at 0.1% of assets would lead to additional taxes of around 1.9 billion for the banks we follow” and “the hypothesis of tax deductibility of the tax would reduce the revenue to about 1.3 billion. “We believe plausible – concludes Intermonte – also the possibility of a lower deductibility of interest expense recorded by the banks, to achieve the same revenue objective”.
On Friday, the president of Volksbank, Lukas Ladurner, explained that tax deductibility would result in “a reduction of 20%-25% of the amount” of the tax, also hoping for corrective measures so that it is not penalizing above all for small banks with a business model based on the traditional activity and therefore on the interest margin.
In the meantime, in Piazza Affari, the capital gap of the main banks listed on the FTSE MIB compared to Monday 7 August, before the announcement of the tax, was further reduced to around 3 billion euro, largely due to Intesa Sanpaolo (1. 8 billion). The only institution to have fully recovered what it lost is currently Banco Bpm, whose capitalization is indeed 8 million higher than last Monday’s. Mediobanca is also almost at breakeven.