The bank that would not die

There is a certain poetry in the spectacle of the world's oldest bank, founded in 1472 and rescued by Italian taxpayers less than a decade ago, now launching €34 billion in counter-bids to fend off a takeover. As Lucrezia Reichlin writes in Project Syndicate, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena's board emerged from seven hours of deliberation on August 20 with an extraordinary decision: rather than yield to Intesa Sanpaolo's €30.6 billion offer, it would attempt to buy Banco BPM and Banca Generali instead. The manoeuvre is audacious, perhaps even reckless — but it is also deeply Italian.

Reichlin's argument deserves our attention. She contends that the episode reveals a fundamental misdirection in EU policy, which has focused on making governments surrender influence over national banking systems rather than building a genuine European financing channel. The Monte dei Paschi saga, seen from this perspective, is not merely a corporate drama but a symptom of a deeper structural ailment: a monetary union without a unified banking and capital market to support it.

We would extend her analysis. The bank's survival instinct — its willingness to swallow rivals rather than be swallowed — mirrors a national habit of defensive consolidation that has served Italy poorly in other domains. From industry to energy, the reflex has often been to protect what exists rather than to build something new. Monte dei Paschi, with its 550-year history and its Sienese Gothic palazzo, embodies this tension between preservation and transformation more vividly than any other institution in the country.

The deeper question, which Reichlin raises implicitly, is whether Europe's financial architecture can accommodate a bank that is simultaneously a monument, a political football, and a commercial enterprise. The answer, we suspect, will determine not only the fate of Monte dei Paschi but also the credibility of the European project itself. If the world's oldest bank becomes a casualty of incomplete integration, the lesson will not be lost on other member states contemplating their own financial sovereignty.

For now, the bank that would not die continues to defy expectations. Whether its counter-bids succeed or fail, Monte dei Paschi has already achieved something remarkable: it has forced a conversation about the future of European finance that policymakers have long avoided. That, perhaps, is the most valuable service an ancient institution can render.