By Paola Arosio
MILAN (Reuters) - Italian bank Monte dei Paschi (MI:BMPS) plans to hire a new chief executive in the next few days to lead a 5 billion euro (4.22 billion pound) capital raising needed to stave off the risk of the world's oldest lender being wound down.
The bank could hold a board meeting to name a replacement as early as Sunday, a source close to the matter said on Friday, after CEO Fabrizio Viola agreed to step down to help persuade wary investors to back the latest cash call.
The Tuscan bank may need one or two more days to get informal approval for the new boss from the European Central Bank, the source added. A second source said it may take until next weekend for the appointment to be announced.
Marco Morelli, the head of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) Merrill Lynch in Italy, was almost certain to be given the job, another source told Reuters late on Thursday.
Viola, who joined Monte dei Paschi in 2012 to turn the bank around, has presided over two successive share issues since 2014 that raised 8 billion euros and investors were reluctant to back him a third time, bankers said.
The latest plan aims to clean up and bolster the bank's balance sheet once and for all, restoring to health a lender whose frailty threatens the wider Italian banking system, the savings of thousands of retail investors and the political standing of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
A financial crisis in the euro zone's third-biggest economy would also risk creating contagion across Europe.
"This is a key transaction for Monte dei Paschi, it has to succeed," said a source close to the matter.
"The consortium of banks sounded out hundreds of investors around the world and what emerged was that many wanted a new management to implement a business plan and put the bank back on a sound footing," the source added.
CAPITAL INCREASE DELAYED?
Shares in Monte dei Paschi were down 1.1 percent by 1338 GMT, giving the bank a valuation of only around 700 million euros. The bank emerged as Europe's weakest in stress tests at the end of July.
Morelli was chief financial officer at Monte dei Paschi before he left in 2010. He worked for the bank when it bought regional lender Antonveneta in 2007 in a costly deal that backfired disastrously and when it entered complex derivative trades to conceal losses stemming from that acquisition.
Three former top managers at Monte dei Paschi have been sentenced to jail for misleading regulators over those trades, but Siena prosecutors dropped the case against Morelli saying he had opposed the derivative contracts and asked for an internal audit.
Monte dei Paschi has committed to launch the capital increase and sell 9.2 billion euros of bad loans before the end of the year as part of the privately-funded rescue blueprint agreed with the European Central Bank.
However, the fund raising could now be delayed until January or February, a pause that should allow Italy's political situation to become clearer after a referendum on constitutional reform on which Renzi has staked his job.
Analysts say higher risks over the cash call could make a debt conversion to reduce the size of the share sale more likely to succeed.
"It's going to be very difficult to get the 5 billion call away," said Stefano Fabiani, fund manager at Zenit Sgr. "No one has a magic wand."
(additional reporting by Stefano Bernabei in Rome and Stephen Jewkes in Milan; Editing by Keith Weir)