Mr. President of the Administrative Board, Chief Executive Officer, Board Members, Mr. President of the Board of Auditors, Auditors, Shareholders, honored guests.
During the first months of this year, the Foundation has concluded its announced process of selling a significant stake in the bank.
This has enabled us to put the foundation on a firm financial footing, preserving its assets, thanks to the total discharge of the debt with its financial creditors, and to achieve a substantial diversification of the surplus, within which our stake in the bank will continue to assume considerable weight, but it will no longer be predominant.
At the end of this demanding process, the Foundation is able to continue to play a strategic role as an institutional investor in the bank, maintaining its important historic tie with its territory of reference and contributing to the stability of the corporate structure.
Today, as opposed to last December, the state of the Foundation helps create the proper context for the bank to proceed with the necessary tranquility to implement its capital increase.
Moreover, there is no longer the pressure from the markets, caused at the end of 2013 by the risks deriving from the hypothesis of a massive sale of shares and rights by what was at the time the bank’s major shareholder, which at the time, as we stated repeatedly, would absolutely not have been able to take part in the increase.
The organization which I represent has operated and will continue to operate as an “Aggregating Pole” with the intent of identifying and bringing together qualified investors who can act, in a shared intermediate and long-term logic, to support the bank’s relaunching.
The Foundation, as the shareholders’ agreement recently signed demonstrates, intends to promote the presence of a solid foundation of shares and an adequate investment horizon which, far removed from any idea of speculation, supports the sustainable and fitting growth and valuation of its stake.
I would like to welcome Fintech Advisory Inc. and BTG Pactual Europe LLP, thanking them for the confidence they have chosen to place in the Foundation and the Bank.
I would like to welcome all the new shareholders: the Foundation is at their disposal to pursue together a course of growth and valuation of the capital invested in its natural role as a point of reference for its home territory.
I would like to extend my greetings also to the established shareholders, thanking them for having adopted the Foundation’s proposal made in the December assembly and having shared once again the path of development of the bank after the major sacrifices made in past years.
The Foundation is available, now more than ever, to write a new story of success and satisfaction.
As an institutional investor, the Foundation asks the administrators for a continuing and constant effort so that the bank, having completed the process of asset consolidation, may return quickly to producing profits and distributing dividends.
It is imperative to recover as soon as possible an adequate return on investment, a further improvement in efficiency that will enable the bank once again to produce operating gains and satisfactory revenues, and a level of management economy in keeping with shareholder expectations and that will lay the foundations for contending on equal terms with its competitors in the market.
The work of management, aimed at achieving the goals of the business plan, has yielded in the course of the first months of this year some positive signs, even though initial, in terms of commercial results, the cost of raising funds, organizational restructuring, reduction of costs, and hedging of risks.
The results achieved thus far represent the first step in a process of relaunching the group; in the next quarterly reports these must be even more evident, concrete, and incisive in order to meet and exceed the goals announced in the plan presented to the financial community in October 2013.
I have confidence in the bank’s ability to respond to the Foundation’s expectations. I therefore announce here our vote in favor of the proposal of a capital increase of 5 billion euros, which is 2 billion euros more than the capital increase approved last December.
As the top management of the bank has illustrated to us, this operation gives the bank the possibility on one side to honor optimally the commitments made in the Reorganization Plan approved by the European Commission; and on the other to conclude – in keeping with the best practice of the market – an operation of asset strengthening capable to withstanding the impact of the European Union’s asset quality review and stress tests.
In the past years, the Foundation has contributed massively to strengthening the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena’s balance sheet. With this upcoming major effort asked of the shareholders, the last – I trust – not only chronologically but also in our intermediate and long term expectations, the bank will be equipped with a more solid financial and equity structure, capable of sustaining the growth of the group and at the same time of responding with speed and flexibility to any further demands using its own resources.
In conclusion, the Foundation expects that the work done by management will enable the bank to implement its plans in the near future and to reach in the indicated time frame, if not earlier, the objectives contained in the current Strategic Plan.
Objectives, I would like to reiterate, that were indicated well before the decision, under discussion today, to raise significantly the amount of the capital increase. Among these goals is reimbursement of the New Financial Instruments, for which it is hoped that, besides the announced repayment of 3 billion euros, all or part of the residual amount, about 1 billion euros, will also be reimbursed in advance.
The Foundation, as a responsible and aware shareholder, attentive to the return on its equity, will stand guard to make sure that the results planned and so strongly desired will be achieved. It will watch to be sure the course already set in motion for a more efficient bank is completed, on the basis of a relationship of trust and dialectic – while respecting each other’s roles – between the shareholders and management. To the latter falls the responsibility for achieving the goals indicated, and on this they will be judged.
To the management, the auditors, and all the personnel of Monte dei Paschi, who also in these complicated months have demonstrated that they are a fundamental resource for the bank, I extend my best wishes for the job they have to do, assuring them of the Foundation’s support in the path of growth and valuation in the coming months.

Antonella Mansi
President, Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation