ROME: Until very recently, Domenico Bertini, a machinery technician nearing retirement, viewed his local bank in the picturesque Vicenza region of northern Italy as family. The 150-year-old Banca Popolare di Vicenza was a world away from the faceless bankers of Wall Street who brought the global financial system close to collapse almost a decade ago. It was a traditional, safe institution staffed by Bertini’s friends. Or so he and many others thought. What remained of their extraordinary faith in the bank has now turned to anger and disbelief, with grave implications for Italy’s banking system, which is funded to a large extent by ordinary people via bonds and shares as well as deposits.
Popolare di Vicenza — in financial straits and under investigation for misselling its own shares to clients, false accounting and deceiving regulators — revealed in April that many of its customers’ life savings would be all but wiped out. For Bertini, aged 56 and with two children, it was a personal betrayal.
