As a result, Quaestio said in a statement it was now considering winding down Atlante, which was set up in April 2015 with contributions from Italian banks and other financial institutions.

Atlante had a total endowment of 4.25 billion euros. It put the 800 million euros that were not invested in the Veneto banks into a spin-off fund, known as Atlante 2, that was created to buy bad loans from ailing banks.

With further contributions from other institutions, Atlante 2 built up a firepower of 2.2 billion euros that it has now almost entirely committed to a string of bad loan deals.