Montani, the banker who became a banker with a reputation as a “healer”

The new CEO of Bper Piero Montani is a born banker. He knows the bank’s “machine” in every detail, and in every cost center, and he knows how to make it work. He learned the trade starting in 1974, immediately after graduating in accounting, to work at the counter and then doing all the classic bank apprenticeship: securities office, abroad, goods, credit lines, commercial development. And then branch manager, area manager, up to arriving with a managerial role in the (now former) Milan office in Piazza Cordusio, alternating top management roles in planning and control with those in commercial and distribution functions (including CEO of Consult sim, who then it will become Xelion). After more than twenty years at Credit, he moved on to a role of top manager in one of the banking schools where efficiency was the rule: Credito Romagnolo in the era of Cesare Farsetti, a thoroughbred banker and pyrotechnic character who loved to surprise the branches of the “Rolo” to check how the employees treated the customers, verifying that all the counter operators had a tie (“at Rolo we not only have the best bankers – Farsetti liked to say between the serious and the facetious – but also the most elegant and the most ‘beautiful’). In a bank run by one of the last fathers-masters, and in a complex phase like that of the integration with Credit after the success of the takeover, Montani managed to emerge for his recognized quality as a hard worker.

The experience at the Popolare di Novara and the friendship with Gianluca Santi

After only two years at Rolo, the turning point of his career arrives with the call – on the strong moral suasion of the Bank of Italy – to the top of the Banca Popolare di Novara, first as general manager and immediately after as CEO. From being the largest cooperative bank in Italy, Novara was in deep crisis at the end of the 1990s. It had to be restructured and then, as requested by the supervisory authorities, aggregated with another bank. Montani found himself managing a difficult situation, among a thousand localisms, old big deals to be fixed and credits to manage, a hypothesis of an aggregation with Capitalia-Banca di Roma almost made but then mysteriously vanish, an economist president with a volcanic character like Siro Lombardini with whom it was not always easy to summarize. It is a world of the “old Novara”, which had as its flag the now very old former president Lino Venini, opposed to any aggregation. Montani dedicated himself to the reorganization by working with a team of a very loyal few (including the then young head of investor relations Gianluca Santi, whom we will discuss later) and then, with the advisor Mediobanca, decidedly focused on the merger with Popolare di Verona led by the CEO Fabio Innocenzi. Bank of Italy liked.

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The (millionaire) offer of the Dutch from Abn Amro to lead AntonVeneta

With Innocenzi, as was to be expected, the ticket didn’t work. Two company heads, even with predefined positions, rarely coexist for long despite the “scenic fiction” of the merger of equals. After only one year as “co head” of Verona-Novara, in 2003 Montani was called by the Dutch of Abn Amro – always with the approval of the Bank of Italy – to lead the AntonVeneta Bank, after the long years of Silvano Pontello’s management characterized by numerous acquisitions and difficult integrations (starting with the National Bank of Agriculture). For Montani, who brings Gianluca Santi as a close trusted collaborator, it is the second real turning point in his career. If in Novara the leap had been professional, in Padua the leap also concerns his remuneration. Also thanks to the subsequent battle for control, with takeover bid and counter-bid between the Dutch and Popolare Lodi, Abn Amro retains Montani with a remuneration that makes him one of the best paid bankers (and most envied by his colleagues). The result of the bloody battle, which lasted almost two years with consequent paralysis of the bank, brings AntonVeneta into the arms of Mps. Montani refuses to remain with positions in the new group and leaves in 2008.

The experience driving Bpm that can be useful in Bper

For three years, Montani remains an “unemployed” coach. His small team of trusted managers, who had followed him from Novara to Verona and then to AntonVeneta, is dispersed. His right-hand man Gianluca Santi moved to Unipol, where over the years he became one of Carlo Cimbri’s closest trusted top managers. It often happens, from then on, that in the various Bolognese repatriations of Montani, starting with the former colleagues of Rolo, in greeting his friend Santi one ends up having a chat with The number one of Unipol, with whom the relationship of mutual esteem is now more than ten years old. In the three years of “exile”, Montani rejects some proposals that do not convince him. And as happens to Serie A coaches, wait. Dedicating himself more to the family that continues to live in Carate Brianza, making himself seen a little more often at the stadium to follow his Sampdoria, and extending the time to relax in his good retiro in Poveromo, four kilometers north of Forte dei Marmi . In mid-2011 he decided to accept the proposal to lead MedioCredito Centrale and the newly formed Banca del Mezzogiorno into the orbit of Poste Italiane. But the Roman one (apart from Bankitalia) is not his world and when six months later Andrea Bonomi’s Investindustrial, informed by the Bank of Italy (and also Mediobanca), calls him to lead the Banca Popolare di Milano after Ponzellini, he accepts the new job with the enthusiasm of a kid (and again with a salary that many envy him). There is a need to settle the accounts, negotiate with the trade unions-shareholders, dialogue with the new ECB supervisory authority. An experience that in many respects could be useful to him now at Bper if, as it seems, he will have to verify whether a merger with BancoBpm is possible. And certainly Montani – who in addition to his experience in BPM also has a brief one in Verona-Novara – knows the strengths and weaknesses of the counterpart bank, as well as almost all the first and second managerial lines of the various banks merged into the group.

In Carige the ticket with Castelbarco and the tensions with Malacalza

At Bpm the experience lasts just long enough to clean up the budget and put the group back on track. Then, also thanks to some differences with President Bonomi, Montani goes away accepting – who knows if he has ever regretted it – the Malacalza family’s offer (also at the suggestion of the Bank of Italy …) to guide Carige out of the aftermath of the Berneschi era . Another “sick” bank, again the idea of ​​going to rehabilitate, to clean up the credit portfolio. Montani seems less convinced than other times but, for a Genoese banker now over sixty, the idea of ​​ending his career at the helm of the bank in the city where he was born is rewarded for the objective environmental difficulties. In Carige he makes a ticket with the president-gentleman Cesare Castelbarco Albani but soon both realize that the bank is struggling to withstand the impact of past critical issues and the pounding action of the ECB Supervisory which, in fact, from Frankfurt commissioner the bank. When the Apollo fund’s proposal to recapitalize the institute arrives in Montani and Castelbarco, they rush to present the offer to the board thinking they have found the solution to save Carige. This is not the opinion of the Malacalza family who, in addition to not confirming them in their position, also promote a legal case (then the Court will agree with Montani and Castelbarco).