Tuesday's session saw a general return to the red for global indices. Italy suffered the most, with the Milan MIB index down more than 2%, battered by its large banking sector. The Italian government had taken everyone by surprise by introducing an exceptional tax on bank profits to capture part of the windfall generated by the ECB's rate hike. Intesa, Unicredit and co. were chopped up into small pieces, but the shockwave brought the entire European banking sector to its knees. Investors reinstated a risk premium on the bank, in case the Italian bombshell gave other executives ideas. The government was later forced to backtrack to avoid a meltdown, with the finance ministry issuing a statement stressing that the tax on net interest income would be capped at 0.1 per cent of assets.
