Spanish bank gives up bid for Italian bank

ROME, July 22 (UPI) -- Rome succeeded Friday in fighting off another foreign company's efforts to buy an Italian bank, in this case the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro.

Spanish bank BBVA, which was seeking to buy BNL for $10 billion in a stock deal, was competing with Italian insurer Unipol for BNL.

While BBVA is vastly larger than Unipol and was offering more for BNL than Unipol, the Italian company's far more powerful political allies drove off the Spanish suitor, the BBC reported Friday.

It is the second such recent outcome: Dutch bank ABN Amro's effort to buy Banca Popolre Italiana also appears to have been defeated with the thinly veiled assistance of Italy's central bank.

The two episodes have turned up the volume on criticism against Italy's close-knit financial community.

Italy's central bank and financial system is suffering from a "problem of transparency," said Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, head of Italian employers' association Confindustria.