The rupture hardened quickly. On March 24, MPS identified Palermo as its sole CEO candidate, turning what might have been a controlled succession into an explicit choice between continuity and reset. A day later, the bank revoked Lovaglio’s executive powers and assigned ordinary management to acting Deputy General Manager Maurizio Bai.
By March 27, MPS said preliminary interactions with Consob and the European Central Bank showed all three slates — the board’s, PLT Holding’s and Assogestioni’s — could still be voted by shareholders. Saturday’s regulatory clarity matters because it removes the last gray area before the meeting and forces asset managers, proxy advisers and institutional investors to judge substance rather than process.
Why the Monte dei Paschi vote matters
With the legal uncertainty largely gone, the ballot now looks like a referendum on strategy. Lovaglio can argue that he led the bank through restructuring and into a bolder consolidation phase. The board is making the opposite case: that the next stage needs a different steward, one it believes is better suited to govern a larger and more complex institution after the Mediobanca deal.
The practical consequence is that Monte dei Paschi is no longer arguing over whether a rival slate can get on the ballot. It is arguing over who gets to define governance, integration and capital allocation after the Mediobanca deal. That is what makes this meeting more than a routine board renewal.
How Monte dei Paschi got here
The current clash reads differently when set against the bank’s recent arc. In early 2022, Reuters reported that MPS was set to name veteran banker Luigi Lovaglio as CEO as the lender tried to regain its footing after years of crisis. By early 2024, the recovery looked real enough for the bank to restore a dividend for the first time in 13 years. Then, in June 2025, Reuters reported that the ECB had cleared MPS to pursue its Mediobanca acquisition, pushing the bank from turnaround mode into a new expansion phase.
That longer arc explains why the current boardroom battle feels so consequential. Monte dei Paschi is no longer debating survival. It is debating who gets to control the strategy that followed survival, and whether the executive who helped engineer the comeback should also lead the integration phase that came after it.
Unless one side changes course before the vote, shareholders will arrive on April 15 with the procedural dispute settled but the underlying conflict unresolved. The winner will inherit more than a title: the authority to decide what Monte dei Paschi becomes after its latest transformation.
