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The
Milan Court of Appeal deferred the verdict to Dec. 11 due to one
of the three judges on the panel being unwell.
The verdict is being closely watched by investors in Monte
Paschi since the derivatives cases, together with losses
suffered by MPS during the euro zone debt crisis, had threatened
to destabilise Italy's financial industry and forced the lender
to seek an 8 billion euro bailout in 2017.
Lemanik fund manager Andrea Scauri said last week that in the
case of an acquittal legal risks would be wiped out for Monte
dei Paschi, triggering a release of provisions and the possible
advance payment of a dividend.
The bank's former chairman Alessandro Profumo, former CEO
Fabrizio Viola and the former president of statutory auditors
Paolo Salvadori are defendants in a trial for false accounting
and market rigging.
In the initial trial, Profumo and Viola were each handed a jail
sentence of six years for allegedly not having correctly booked
two derivative transactions, known as Santorini and Alexandria,
between 2012 and 2015. Salvadori received three-and-a-half year
sentence.
However, the main trial on these same deals affecting the bank's
accounts between 2009 and 2011 ended on Oct. 11 with the final
acquittal of all 15 defendants, including Deutsche Bank and
Nomura, by Italy's highest court.
Milan prosecutors had asked in 2018 for the Viola-Profumo case
to be dropped, saying the executives had followed the
regulators' accounting guidelines, but the judge rejected the
request and sent them to trial.
(Reporting by Emilio Parodi, editing by Gavin Jones and Louise
Heavens)
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