Banca Monte dei Paschi share capital increase concludes with major success and full subscription of newly issued ordinary shares.

Siena, May 30, 2008 – There has been a successful conclusion to the rights offering in respect of the ordinary shares issued pursuant to the share capital increase which was approved by the Board of Directors of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena S.p.A. ("BMPS") on March 20, 2008 and April 24, 2008, in execution of the mandate granted by the Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting of March 6, 2008 pursuant to article 2443 of the Italian Civil Code.

Following the offer on 22, 23, 26, 27 and 28 May 2008, on the Italian Stock Exchange, of the 12,533,804 unexercised subscription rights in respect of an equal number of newly issued BMPS ordinary shares (equal to approximately 0.46% of the total number of ordinary shares offered), all of the remaining 12,533,804 newly issued BMPS ordinary shares were subscribed for, at the price of Euro 1.5 per share, with a total value of Euro 18,800,706.

The share capital increase was therefore completed with the entire subscription of:

• 2,740,485,580 newly issued ordinary shares, for a total value of Euro 4,110,728,370.00, without the need for any underwriting support by Citigroup Global Markets Limited, Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Limited, Goldman Sachs International, Mediobanca – Banca di Credito Finanziario S.p.A. or Merrill Lynch International;
• 9,432,170 newly issued saving shares, with a total value of Euro 14.148.255,00 and
• 565,939,729 newly issued preference shares, with a total value of Euro 848,909,593.50.

Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena, pursuant to the commitment made by it to BMPS, fully exercised its subscription rights and subscribed for (i) 1,344,426,704 ordinary shares corresponding to 49.06% of the ordinary shares offered and 20,24% of the new share capital, (ii) 9,360,536 saving shares corresponding to 99.24% of the savings shares offered and 0.14% of the new share capital, and (iii) 565,939,729 preference shares corresponding to 100% of the preference shares offered and 8.52% of the new share capital.

The new share capital of BMPS now amounts to Euro 4,451,299,156.28 and consists of 5,492,986,286 ordinary shares, 1,131,879,458 preference shares, and 18,864,340 saving shares, all with a nominal value of Euro 0.67 each.

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