MILAN (Reuters), UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel defended Monday his role as investment banker for the 2007 acquisition of Banca Antonveneta de Monte dei Paschi. He said he could only have financed the transaction and not have vouched that the price was fair.

A large part of blame for precipitating Italy’s 2017 bailout was the Antonveneta purchase on the edge of the global financial crises.

Orcel, the global head of Merrill Lynch’s Financial Institutions team had previously advised Santander [MC:] in the disastrous 71-billion-euro ($82billion) takeover of ABN Amro. The Spanish bank’s acquisition was done together with Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland and Belgium. Fortis (NYSE)

Orcel collaborated with MPS to purchase Antonveneta (ABN Amro) from Santander.

Antonveneta was valued at approximately 6.6 billion Euros in ABN Amro’s larger deal, but the Tuscan bank only paid 9 Billion euros.

Orcel, who appeared Monday before a committee of parliamentarians following the fall of talks between UniCredit’s Treasury and Italy’s Treasury about a rescue plan for MPS said that he only had helped MPS raise the funds it required to purchase Antonveneta.

He stated that he did not represent MPS during the Antonveneta acquisition and was therefore not involved in negotiations. After the purchase was finalized, we played a part in MPS’s recapitalization as the global coordinator of the rights issue.

MPS completed a capital increase of 5 billion euros as part a 8 billion-euro financing package.

Orcel stated that neither Orcel nor the bank I was employed could provide a fairness opinion due to Antonveneta’s rapid sale at different prices. This is well documented in the prospectus on the capital rise. ($1 = 0.8655 euros)