Italy's top court acquits ex Monte Paschi executives in derivative case

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Supreme Court acquitted three former managers at bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena who had been accused of misleading authorities in relation to a 2009 derivative trade that prosecutors said was used to conceal losses.

The Tuscan bank was bailed out by the state in 2017 under an 8 billion euro rescue plan which handed Rome 68 percent of the world's oldest lender.

Former chairman Giuseppe Mussari, ex-chief executive Antonio Vigni and one-time finance boss Gianluca Baldassari had already been acquitted by a court of appeal in December 2017. That verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court on Wednesday, whose decision cannot be appealed.

The first-grade ruling by a court in Siena, home town of Italy's fourth-biggest lender, in October 2014 had called for jail terms of three years and six months for each of the men, for allegedly hiding a document relating to the transaction with Japanese bank Nomura.

Defense lawyers have said that regulators had access to all the necessary information to understand the scope of the operation.

A separate, higher-profile trial against the same defendants and former employees at Nomura and Deutsche Bank for alleged false accounting, market manipulation and misleading regulators is ongoing in Milan.

(Reporting by Domenico Lusi; writing by Emilio Parodi; editing by David Evans)

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