Siena’s Financial Fiasco: The World’s Oldest Bank Took Five Centuries to Build — and Three Years to Gamble It Away
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Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank, took five centuries to accumulate its wealth — and three years to gamble it away. Its fall from grace is a disaster for its home city of Siena, which relied on distributed profits from the bank. Now the picturesque Tuscan city is trying to come to terms with the new reality.
Valentina still has exactly 22 hours before her future comes to an end. She has to drop off papers at the Italian Football Federation by 6 p.m. tomorrow to register her club in Serie A, Italy’s top soccer league. It would be a triumph, a well-earned conclusion of a season in which the female football team of the Italian city of Siena qualified for promotion into the country’s highest league for the first time.
Dropping off the papers in Rome on time wouldn’t have been the problem, but the €17,000 ($21,000) registration fee was. The club’s traditional sponsor had backed out, due to “an internal decision,” as had been explained in the fax, written on letterhead with the Monte dei Paschi Foundation’s logo of three beehives at the top.
Valentina Lorenzini is the coach, masseuse and organizer of the soccer club Siena Calcio Femminile. She is a stocky 43-year-old who refuses to believe that it’s over, that something has finally come to an end in her city. “We won and we can’t be promoted,” she says. “How sick is that?”
But there is still time. It’s only 8 p.m. Perhaps she’ll still manage to find someone.