“Veteran banker Passera felt he would at least have a chance to make his case. He didn’t. As the train reached Florence, about 70 km from Siena, his phone rang. Monte dei Paschi’s chairman told him the board would not hear him, according to a source familiar with the events. The bank had instead pinned its fate on JPMorgan’s plan to clear out 28 billion euros ($29 billion) in bad debts and raise 5 billion euros in equity – one that ended in failure in the early hours of Friday when the Tuscan lender said it could not find enough investors and asked the government to bail it out.”