MILAN: Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena said on Wednesday the results of a European Central Bank inspection of its loan book will not be published until after it has tried to raise billions of euros from investors to keep afloat.
Italy's third biggest bank, which emerged as Europe's weakest lender in regional stress tests this summer, is trying to raise 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) to meet regulatory demands to bolster its capital base and prevent it from being wound down.
In a document published on its website on Wednesday at the request of market regulator Consob, the Tuscan bank said it expected the results of the ECB inspection to be published in the first half of next year.
Monte dei Paschi has the highest proportion of bad loans relative to all loans of any other Italian bank, at around 36 percent. Its rescue plan includes a sale of 28 billion euros of gross bad loans, which is about 60 percent of the total.
Monte dei Paschi also said it expected to raise 1.043 billion euros from a debt-to-equity conversion as it seeks to cut the size of a share sale due to be launched next month.
The bank is due to hold a shareholder meeting on Thursday at which investors will be asked to approve the capital raising plan which is seen as a test of investor confidence in Italy's battered banking sector.
It aims to launch the debt swap on Nov. 28, a source has said, less than a week before a constitutional referendum that could unseat the government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
The bank also said on its website that costs linked to the overall rescue plan were estimated at 448 million euros gross, but would fall to 8 million euros if the capital raising measures were unsuccessful.
Monte dei Paschi also said its pro-forma net loss for the nine months to the end of September was revised to 4.548 billion euros as of Nov. 21 from the 4.185 billion euros announced to the market previously.
The bank's shares, which were temporarily suspended earlier on Wednesday, were down 3.2 percent at 1104 GMT compared with a 3 percent drop in Italy's banking index.
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