Mps, postcards from a Siena that no longer exists – Chronicle
Pino Di Blasio If I had recorded all the nonsense pronounced in the various in-depth programs on TV or written in the classic trips within the city prostrated by mourning, made just from home, hearing the same interlocutors, I could write a manual of souvenir banality. I do not mean that the sun shines on Rocca Salimbeni, that the near future of the bank, once it has escaped the clutches of Orcel, will be …
Pine tree
By Blasio
If I had recorded all the nonsense spoken in the various in-depth programs on TV or written in the classic trips within the city prostrated by mourning, all done from home, hearing the same interlocutors, I could have written a manual of souvenir banality.
I do not want to say that the sun shines on Rocca Salimbeni, that the near future of the bank will be peaceful even if it will remain a spinster. Monte dei Paschi is a bank that is in urgent need of billions of fresh capital, which continues to have too many staff and too many branches, with too big a head to hold deposits and credits that tend inexorably to decline. But in Siena no one feels like an orphan of UniCredit, no one sheds tears for a nuanced negotiation because the government has said no to the claims of Orcel and the major shareholders of the UniTower. Questions remain about what will happen now, who could be the next White Knight, how much time will Europe grant to Treasury Minister Daniele Franco and under what conditions. While waiting for the answers, Monte continues to open its branches, to collect and lend money for customers, to take out mortgages, to offer financial and insurance products, to do banking, as has been the tradition for 550 years.
Siena is not the same city as it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago. It has changed, perhaps those who found it after almost twenty years can guess it. He tried to ‘demontepaschizzarsi’ when he had to deal with the abrupt interruption of the sources of milk and honey that came from the Foundation and the Bank. When the 233 million contributions to the territory were reduced to zero and then reached 4 million. When the Rocca even cut the Christmas gift to the 17 Contrade. But he grew his other treasures as he tried to salvage the bank. The two universities got back on their feet after the crisis, the Polyclinic sold to the Region has resumed the path of excellence, life sciences, the origins of art and museums, a tourism that never betrays even if it changes habits, they transformed Siena from a ‘one company town’ into a city with more faces and more opportunities. The only ones not killed are the guests who send the usual postcards from Mt.
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