Several hours ago, on Saturday morning, the four-member board of the Bank of Italy - this time without its prior president Mario Draghi - met to consider the position of scandal-hit bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena and decide whether to authorize its request for 3.9 billion euros ($5.3 billion) of state loans.

As we reported previously, it has emerged over the past week that due to previously undisclosed derivative contracts first exposed by Bloomberg, the Siena bank has hid as much as $1 billion in losses.