Last month, this newspaper published a boxed registrar of companies advert, in terms of Subsection (2) Art 325 of the 1995 Companies Act, advising all and sundry that the company registered in its records with the Number C443, The National Bank of Malta Limited, would be struck off its register – and, hence, out of living existence – if, by March 7, 2021 nobody or no entity comes forward with valid reasons why it, the registry, should not do so.
The Number C443 is clearly suggestive of the notion that, ever since company registration with this country’s official registrar became law after, first, the Commercial Partnerships Ordnance of 1962 and, later, when the present Companies Act was passed in 1995, this banking company was, in fact, one of the earlier companies to formally register in conformity with the new law.
Compare, for example, within the context of the same abovementioned advert, that The International Banking Corporation (Malta) Holding Limited, also scheduled to be struck off the official register on March 7, 2021, carries Number C42800.
The elimination for ever from the official register of these two bank organisations is conditional to “cause [being] is previously shown to the contrary”.
In Malta’s legal history, The National Bank of Malta issue is most probably the longest saga ever
And here, specifically with regard to The National Bank of Malta, seems to lie a nub. Because one needs to consider and ask whether the currently still not finalised issue of settlement of the claims of the former shareholders of that bank qualifies as suitable “cause” for the striking off not to take place.
On January 5, 2006, Vanessa Macdonald had written in this paper that the “National Bank of Malta issue [had] reache[d]s [its] watershed”. Unfortunately, that was very much wide off the mark. It had to take up to October 14, 2014 for Malta’s Constitutional Court (Justices Mallia, Cuschieri, and Azzopardi) to decide on Case Nos 389/1992/2 and 390/1992/2, which were actually appeals – on essentially the same issues – from cases which, on January 9, 2014, Mr Justice Joseph Micallef had bravely already decided upon in the Civil Court First Hall (constitutional jurisdiction).
One says bravely because the issues in question in this epic conflict had been played ‘legal tennis’ with by at least six judges in previous years (Justices Albert Manché, Alberto Magri, Joseph D. Camilleri, Joseph Filletti, Anton Depasquale and Giannino Caruana Demajo), with all of them – for, undoubtedly, valid reasons at law – not taking the case before them to judicial conclusion.
In Malta’s legal history, The National Bank of Malta issue is most probably the longest saga ever. In Malta’s banking history it is also the epitome of that period, from the start of the 1960s, when, along with the case of the Bank of Industry, Commerce and Agriculture Ltd (BICAL), Malta’s banking first went into crisis and then into modernity.
That the state in Malta has not yet found it possible to solve, once and for ever, with the bank’s former shareholders (indeed, in the case of many of them, their heirs), The National Bank of Malta issue of a final and just risarcimento (compensation), still hangs like an albatross round the neck of the same state.
I know of other banking historians overseas who have followed this issue; yes, these too often refer to that thing called the reputation of a jurisdiction. Of course, I too, whenever they dare mention it to me, immediately reply with references to some of the stories that revolve around their own notoriously famous names (with far less than totally clean records) such as Medicis, Sforzas, the Ambrosiano and others.
John Consiglio, University lecturer in banking and finance