Bank Bondholders Italy Aims to Protect Are Not All That Poor
- Households owning bank debt are twice as wealthy as average
- Only 1 in 20 Italian households own any bank bonds at all
This article is for subscribers only.
As Italy’s government prepares to shield retail bondholders under its bank-rescue plan, it probably won’t be helping many ordinary folk.
Just 5.4 percent of Italian households own bank bonds, and those families are more than twice as wealthy as the national average, according to an analysis of Bank of Italy data by Bloomberg. Cabinet ministers agreed early Friday to plow as much as 20 billion euros ($21 billion) into the country’s lenders after Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA’s capital-raising failed, under terms that will help protect retail owners of bank debt.