Italy’s Monte dei Paschi says rescue plan backed by underwriters

MILAN Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena has secured underwriters to back a turnaround plan involving the sale of 9.2 billion euros ($10.3 billion) in bad loans and a 5 billion euros capital increase, the lender said in a statement on Friday.

The country’s third-largest lender said it had signed a pre-underwriting agreement with a consortium of Italian and international banks for the capital raising, and that a state-backed banking bailout fund, Atlante, had agreed to underwrite the sale of a portion of the bank’s riskier bad debts.

(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi and Valentina Za, writing by Mark Bendeich)