Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Italy’s third-largest bank and the world’s oldest, has admitted in a statement posted quietly on its website that its customer deposits have fallen by a “few billion euros.” That was after a series of scandals rocked the more than 600-year-old institution, which included a €730 million derivatives loss it racked up from 2006 to 2009. These transactions are at the heart of a fraud probe at the bank. Italian prosecutors are investigating whether MPS used derivatives transactions to hide losses from regulators. Bloomberg reported in January that Deutsche Bank designed a derivative ... (full story)