Italian banks and the government at risk of failure within 12 months; signs of a more reconciliatory attitude to the EU.

Scandals and losses are ending the co-dependency between European banks and retail shareholders, highlighting the conflict of interest in relying on depositors for capital – and showing up a barrier to Europe’s new bail-in framework. A less parochial, more austere but more accountable era is just beginning.

The Italian bank has bought some time with the ECB, but what it really needs is a white knight.

Investors worry that volatility in Italian government bond prices may leave some Italian banks needing to raise capital just as the markets close to them.

A time of crisis is a time for action. At last.

Euromoney talks to ECB Single Supervisory Mechanism board member Ignazio Angeloni about the challenges the SSM faces, and how eurozone integration, and in some cases bank mergers, could help improve European banks’ competitiveness.

Regulatory pressures are beginning to force firms to innovate as tech developments make it ever easier for companies to keep digital records of various transactions – and providers are taking advantage.

A crisis is forcing a spike in small bank mergers in Italy. It is a more tentative trend in Germany, although these banks’ common desire for independence might make such crises inevitable.

Brexit-sparked competition from US banks a good thing, ECB supervisor says; Italian populism ‘a burdensome tax’ on banks.

Italy flows up despite populists’ impact on bond yields; warns of peak debt across the West

Despite the latest attempts to stymie them, Eurosceptic populists remain the most powerful political force in Italy – largely thanks to anger at a banking crisis, often fanned by the ECB. Now their approach to power is killing the last chance of fixing the banking union, and possibly the euro.

Firm buys Credito di Romagna stake; European banking licence adds to appeal.

After a year in the recovery ward, 2017 results show some banks are healing. The most serious illness, negative rates, is stubbornly resistant however. The danger remains that banks may not recover before another disease –financial or technological – strikes.

Carve out of NPL servicing; minority owner sought for Eurizon.

Italy’s banking crisis might move Mediobanca ever further away from its past as the country’s corporate gatekeeper. But its merchant banking legacy still gives it valuable links and a clubby prestige cherished by clients and shareholders.

Investors can support their local lenders by preparing to sell them.

Banca Carige pulled off a recapitalization last December that even chief executive Paolo Fiorentino thought difficult. It raised more than four times its market cap, just ahead of an ECB deadline. Euromoney asks how he did it and how the bank can reward its investors.

Any attempt to deal with Europe’s non-performing loans always seems to end up in a fight.

With progress made on profitability, the chief executive is turning to deep-seated organizational challenges

Lenders recoil at new deadlines for 100% NPL coverage; ECB throws spanner in works of Banca Carige capital raising.

An investment fund focused on banks with a slant on Europe and Italy might sound like a recipe for disaster, but Davide Serra of Algebris tells a story of market-beating returns and snowballing AuM, and thinks the best times lie ahead.

Nearly every time Europe’s Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive is called into play, there seems to be a new justification for using public money.

A textbook case, a long-inevitable state bailout and a brazen political fudge: Europe’s BRRD has had something of a rough ride this summer. As the region’s banks brace themselves for the capital-raising marathon that is MREL, are the new resolution regulations actually doing more harm than good?

As a self-described ‘insider-outsider’ at UniCredit, Jean Pierre Mustier has transformed the image of Italy’s biggest bank – inside and out – over an extraordinary 12 months as CEO.

Firm behind Atlante rubbishes private offers for Veneto banks; freed funds for MPS deal a ‘coincidence’.

Two weeks after the Popular rescue was hailed as a triumph of Europe’s post-crisis resolution regulations, the collapse of two Italian lenders is set to cost the taxpayer €17 billion

Just two weeks after Banco Popular’s rescue was hailed as a triumph of Europe’s post-crisis resolution regulation in action, Italian taxpayers are footing the €17 billion bill for the collapse of two long-troubled lenders. Maybe that post-crisis regulation isn’t quite as effective as it is supposed to be.

The ECB’s inflation outlook in March gave hope that, after a year in intensive care, European banks are recovering. There is a sense that Basel risk-weighting rules pose less of an immediate danger, while peak regulation has passed. Is European banking cured or only in remission?

As UBI Banca prepares a new capital raising linked to its purchase of three rescued banks, CEO Victor Massiah says his bank and others can do more to build economies of scale through mergers.

As UniCredit goes from zero to hero, is Intesa taking the opposite route?