Italy: Banco Ambrosiano Emergency Liquidity Program, 1982

On June 14, 1982, prompted by the disappearance of Banco Ambrosiano (BA) CEO Roberto Calvi, the Bank of Italy opened an investigation into BA, which revealed to the market BA's 1.9 trillion-2.2 trillion Italian lire (ITL; USD 1.4 billion-USD 1.6 billion) in questionable foreign loans. The Treasury Ministry deemed intervention necessary because BA's collapse would compromise the credibility of the Italian banking system abroad. Attempts to appeal to the Vatican Bank to honor guarantees it had made against these foreign loans failed. The Bank of Italy worried that runs on deposits would further impair BA while authorities explored alternatives to cover the losses on the nonperforming loans. To preempt depositor runs, the Bank of Italy organized a liquidity support operation consisting of fixed-term advances, currency transfers, and reserve requirement easing, plus a more substantial amount of funds supplied by a rescue consortium of public and private banks. The first fixed-term advance was provided on July 7, 1982, at a size of ITL 97 billion, for 22 days. On July 28, the Bank of Italy authorized an extension for the advance and increased the limit to ITL 126 billion. On August 8, when BA was reconstituted as Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano, BA had ITL 143.5 billion in outstanding debts to the Bank of Italy.