Italy securities watchdog chief slams Italexit, EU bail-in rules

Head of Italy's securities watchdog agency Consob on Monday slammed the notion of an Italexit and the EU's bank bail-in rules alike.

In his seventh yearly speech to financial markets, Giuseppe Vegas said an Italexit "would be a shock to the entire eurozone" and place its very survival at risk.

"It would endanger the stability and proper functioning of the financial system," the Consob chief warned.

He spoke in the wake of Sunday's French electoral victory of liberal, pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron over rightwing, euro-skeptic contender Marine Le Pen, who campaigned on a Frexit platform.

In Italy, pro- and anti-EU parties are jockeying for position ahead of the next general election likely to be held in early 2018.

The current number one party is the populist euro-skeptic Five Star Movement, which calls for Italy to leave the eurozone and to go back to its old currency -- the Italian lira.

"The mere announcement of a return to the national currency would cause an immediate withdrawal of capital by international investors, such that it would gravely endanger Italy's capacity to refinance what is the world's third-highest public debt," said Vegas.

Italy's public debt stood at just over 2.2 trillion euros (2.4 trillion U.S. dollars) or 132.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2016, according to official statistics agency Istat.

Debt interest payments equaled 4 percent of GDP last year, Istat said.

On Monday, the spread between Italy's 10-year bond and its German counterpart closed upwards of 181.9 basis points (up from 175 points at Friday's close), with yields at 2.24 percent, according to Il Sole 24 Ore financial paper.

The higher the yield, the more public coffers -- and taxpayers -- have to disburse to pay investors back. The spread is an indicator of investor confidence in Italy -- the higher the spread, the lower the confidence.

Vegas went on to slam the EU's bank rescue rules -- the so-called Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD), which was adopted by the EU in spring 2014 but only went into effect in Italy in January 2016.

The BRRD forbids unpopular taxpayer-funded bailouts until all other avenues have been exhausted and investors have been forced to take losses.

However BBRD rules have caused instability and undermined public trust in the banking system instead of their opposite, intended effect, Vegas argued.

"At the stroke of a pen, (the BRRD) modified the nature of financial instruments, such as subordinated bonds," Vegas said.

"Low-risk products, held by many small savers, were suddenly transformed into risky and inadequate ones," he said, urging more protections for small investors such as a state guarantee for investments up to 100,000 euros -- the same level of protection small account holders enjoy. Endit